that the dentary is half the length of the lower jaw. Hyperodapedon had a longitudinal stapedial canal on the posterior side of the spatulate paroccipital process which the lagenar crest extended laterally to limit the posterior end. Above the ventral margin of the orbit was the upper temporal bar which faced dorsally. A non-directional exploitation of morphospace from smaller ancestors with a smaller size restriction is responsible for a large body size in Hyperodapedon. Hyperodapedon have a single row of teeth in mandible bites between their two rows of teeth fixed to a plate which is formed by a union of the maxilla with the palatine. Other key traits are the two maxillary grooves and a single dentary blade, along with missing the infraorbital foramen. The supraoccipital and opisthotics are fused together. Hyperodapedon had a pair of ridges which are absent on the pterygoid, they are missing the palatal dentition, and the prefrontal is concave deeply on the dorsal side. Discovery The first discovery was from Thomas Henry Huxley in 1859, who named Hyperodapedon gordoni in honor of Rev. Dr. Gordon's contributions in Elgin County. T.H. Huxley found many series of subcylindrical palatal teeth which was the main trait of Hyperodapedon. Huxley was able to distinguish Hyperodapedon from Rhynchosaurus articeps by the maxillary tooth rows. Later on, Lydekker realized that Hyperodapedon have more than two rows of teeth in both the maxilla and palatine. The type species of Scaphonyx (meaning canoe claw), Scaphonyx fischeri that was once thought to be a dinosaur, is now known to be based on dubious material and therefore should be a nomen dubium. The name Paradapedon was elected for the Indian species H. huxleyi (Lydekker, 1881). Benton, 1983, concluded that this rhynchosaur should be considered a species of Hyperodapedon. Hyperodapedon is known from several species and has been found in many areas of the world, due to the continents being joined in the supercontinent Pangaea during the Triassic. Fossils from the various species have been identified from Argentina, Brazil, India, Scotland, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and possibly from Wyoming (United States). Classification Langer et al. (2000) defined Hyperodapedon as a stem-based taxon that includes all rhynchosaurs closer to Hyperodapedon gordoni than to "Scaphonyx" sulcognathus (now Teyumbaita). The cladogram below follows their phylogenetic analysis of Mukherjee & Ray (2014). Valid species that were first assigned to Scaphonyx. A quantitative phylogenetic analysis found a paraphyletic genus Rhynchosaurus, with Rhynchosaurus