Kudnu is an extinct genus of Neodiapsida reptile from the Early Triassic Arcadia Formation of Australia.
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
Paliguana by
Alan 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
Ecology, 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,
There is also evidence of a diversity of indermitae ichnotaxa based on coprolites.
