Kudnu is an extinct genus of neodiapsid reptile from the Early Triassic Arcadia Formation of Australia. The type species is K. mackinlayi.
Discovery and naming
The holotype is QM F9181, an anterior section of a cranium with articulated dentary rami, and it was discovered in the Crater, southwest of Rolleston, Queensland. The referred skull QM F9182 is also known.
Kudnu mackinlayi was named and described by Alan Bartholomai in 1979.
Classification
Kudnu was initially classified within Paliguanidae by Bartholomai (1979). Benton (1985) classified Kudnu within Lepidosauromorpha, while Evans (2003) classified Kudnu within Prolacertiformes, and Evans & Jones (2010) later assigned Kudnu to the Procolophonidae. More recent authors, such as Poropat et al. (2023), consider Kudnu to be a basal member of Neodiapsida.
Paleoecology
The world Kudnu inhabited was still recovering from the recent Permian–Triassic extinction event, and as a result global biodiversity had remained low throughout much of the Early Triassic. The world at this time was generally a hot and arid environment, reaching a temperature of 50 °C or even 60 °C at times.
Currently a high diversity of fauna has so far been recorded from the Arcadia Formation that lived alongside Kudnu. This includes a high diversity of amphibians including 14 genera, the archosauriform Kalisuchus rewanensis, the archosauromorph Kadimakara australiensis, the procolophonid Eomurruna yurrgensis as well as an indeterminate dicynodont.
There is also evidence of a diversity of indermitae ichnotaxa based on coprolites.
References
