page_title: Brasilitherium
section_title: Other features
hierarchical_section_title: Brasilitherium / Description and paleobiology / Other features
caption_attribution_description: English: Limb bone osteohistology of Brasilitherium riograndensis, Candelária Formation, Paraná Basin, Brazil
context_page_description: Brasilitherium, from "Brazil" and therium, thus meaning "Brazilian beast", is an extinct genus of cynodonts that lived during the Middle to Late Triassic in what is now Brazil. It was approximately 12 centimetres long and weighed around 20 grams. It probably fed on insects. Brasilitherium was found in the Candelária Formation of the Paraná Basin in southeastern Brazil. Brasilitherium represents a transition between advanced cynodonts and mammals, having features of both and having early evolution of certain mammalian features, such as hearing and a nasal cavity.
context_section_description: Brasilitherium is a transitional taxon that sets the stage for development of different critical features. Brasilitherium has specialized their basicranium which allows them to start specializing in the middle ear and hearing. Brasilitherium has a stapedial process of the quadrate which is a derivation of the middle ear.
  Paleontologists looked at endocasts in order to study the increase in size of olfactory bulbs. Preservation of soft tissue is virtually impossible in fossils, therefore paleontologists rely on endocasts to study the brain. Some skulls have the brain pressed up against them, leaving impressions that allow the paleontologists to see possible structures that are soft tissue that are harder to see such as blood vessels. They found that the casts in Brasilitherium was larger than non mammaliaform cynodonts. This led to the suggestion that Brasilitherium had early evolution of the mammalian brain.
  Similar to mammaliaforms and not cynodonts, Brasilitherium is found to have grooves in their post canine teeth as well as a formation of a tongue.
  Another similarity to mammalian taxon is that the intraorbital fenstra evolves under the orbit.
caption: Limb bone osteohistology of Brasilitherium riograndensis[10]
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