Fedexia
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Fedexia Temporal range: Late Pennsylvanian, 300 Ma |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Amphibia |
| Order: | †Temnospondyli |
| Family: | Trematopidae |
| Genus: |
Fedexia Berman et al., 2010 |
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Fedexia is an extinct genus of carnivorous temnospondyl within the family Trematopidae. It lived 300 million years ago during the late Carboniferous period. It is estimated to have been 2 feet (0.61 m) long, and likely resembled a salamander.Fedexia is known from a single skull found in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is named after the shipping service FedEx, which owned the land where the holotype specimen was first found.
The holotype skull (CM 76867) was discovered on land owned by the FedEx Corporation near Pittsburgh International Airport in 2004. Adam Striegel, a student at the University of Pittsburgh, found the skull on a field trip to the area, but he mistook the teeth for a fern frond. It was later recognized as a skull by class lecturer Charles Jones, and was taken to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History for further study. The specific name of the type species honors Adam Striegel.
The area where the holotype was discovered was part of the Casselman Formation of the Conemaugh Group. In North American Carboniferous stratigraphy, these strata are early Virgilian in age. According to ICS standards, they are Gzhelian in age. The skull itself was found lying near the base of a road cut that exposes the lower part of the Casselman Formation. The Casselman Formation overlies the Ames Limestone, which represents the last marine submergence of the Appalachian Basin. The earliest portions of the Casselman Formation, consisting of sandstones and siltstones, are overbank levee deposits that were formed at the shoreline of the retreating Ames Sea. Overlying these deposits is the Grafton Sandstone, a cross-bedded channel-phase sandstone deposited by a meandering river. Above the sandstone lies the Birmingham Shale, which includes fine-grained siltstone and shale overbank deposits. A thick paleosol is present at the top of the Birmingham Shale, and it is capped by limestone that is of freshwater lacustrine (lake) origin.
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