Sophineta

Sophineta is an extinct genus of small basal lepidosauromorph reptile known from the Early Triassic (late Olenekian age) of Małopolska Province, southern Poland. It contains a single species, Sophineta cracoviensis.

Sophineta is known from holotype ZPAL RV/175, a nearly complete right maxilla. Many specimens are referred to the species and represent frontals, parietals, prefrontal, postfrontals, postorbitals, jugals, squamosals, pterygoids, quadrates, maxillae, premaxilla, dentaries, vertebrae and ilia. Skull fragments and vertebral column were associated. All specimens are housed in the Institute of Paleobiology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw. All specimens were discovered in situ and collected by a team from the Institute of Geological Sciences of Jagiellonian University, Kraków (Paszkowski and Wieczorek) in 1982 from the Czatkowice 1 locality. This locality is a single exposure from which a diverse fauna of small vertebrates is known. It comes from karst deposits developed in Early Carboniferous (Turnaisian to Mid Visean) limestone at the Czatkowice quarry near Kraków, Southern Poland. The locality dates to the earliest Late Olenekian stage of the Early Triassic period, about 247.3 million years ago. Sophineta is the smaller of the two lepidosauromorph reptiles known from the Early Triassic karst deposits of Czatkowice quarry, the larger on being the kuehneosaurid Pamelina. The material from Czatkowice 1 was transferred to the Museum of the Earth and Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, were a preliminary chemical preparation in acetic acid was performed. More effective preparation started only in the 1990s and terminated in 2007.