Aenigmastropheus

Aenigmastropheus Temporal range: Lopingian, 254.7 Ma PreЄ Є O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Cervical vertebrae
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Clade:	Archosauromorpha
Genus:	†Aenigmastropheus Ezcurra et al., 2014
Type species
†Aenigmastropheus parringtoni Ezcurra et al., 2014

Aenigmastropheus is an extinct genus of early archosauromorph reptiles known from the middle Late Permian Usili Formation of Songea District, southern Tanzania. It contains a single species, Aenigmastropheus parringtoni, known solely from UMZC T836, a partial postcranial skeleton of a mature individual. It was collected in 1933, and first described in 1956, as a "problematic reptile" due to its unique morphology. Therefore, a binomial name was erected for this specimen in 2014. Aenigmastropheus was probably fully terrestrial.

Fossils of Aenigmastropheus were first described by the British paleontologist Dr. Francis Rex Parrington in 1956, in an article titled as "A problematic reptile from the Upper Permian". Parrington reported collecting these remains in the Ruhuhu Valley in the Songea District of southern Tanzania in 1933, and considered them to come from a single individual. This specimen, UMZC T836, in currently housed at the University Museum of Zoology, in Cambridge, UK. UMZC T836 consists of a partial postcranial skeleton including five posterior cervical and anterior dorsal vertebrae, the distal half of the right humerus, a fragment of probable left humeral shaft, the proximal end of the right ulna, and three indeterminate fragments of bone, one of which may represent a partial radius.