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Shihtienfenia; Temporal range: Changhsingian, 254.0–252.3 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
	Fossils on display at the Paleozoological Museum of China
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Clade:	†Parareptilia
Order:	†Procolophonomorpha
Clade:	†Pareiasauria
Family:	†Pareiasauridae
Genus:	†Shihtienfenia; Young & Yeh, 1963
Type species
	†Shihtienfenia permica; Young & Yeh, 1963
Species
	†S. permica Young & Yeh, 1963; †S. completus Wang, Yi and Liu, 2019;
Synonyms
	Huanghesaurus liuliensis Gao, 1983; Shansisaurus xuecunensis Cheng 1980;

Shihtienfenia was a pareiasaurid parareptile from the Late Permian of China.^[1]

Species

Maxilla of *Honania complicidentata*, which may be valid

Lee (1997) refers to S. xuecunensis as a metaspecies lacking the autapomorphies of Shihtienfenia. Tsuji & Müller (2009) seem to consider it a valid taxon for cladistic analysis, and like Lee 1997 place the two Chinese species close to Pareiasuchus.

S. permica (Young and Yeh, 1963); The skull of this pareiasaur is unknown. It is known originally from a number of isolated vertebrae, jaws, and limb-bones and an incomplete skeleton, all from the Shiqianfeng locality near Baode, Shanxi, part of the Sunjiagou Formation. Shanshisaurus xuecunensis Cheng, 1980 and Huanghesaurus liuliensis Gao, 1983 are synonyms.^[3]

S. completus (Wang, Yi and Liu, 2019); The first pareiasaur skull from Asia came from this species.

Classification

Shihtienfenia is unusual because of the presence of 6, rather than the usual 4, sacral vertebrae, and may belong in a separate subfamily, although Oskar Kuhn includes it under the Pareiasaurines in his monograph (Kuhn 1969). As with the Pareiasaurines the upper margin of the ilium is flat.

References

^ ^a ^b ^c "†Shihtienfenia Young and Yeh 1963". Paleobiology Database. Fossilworks. Retrieved 17 December 2021.
^ Jun-you Wang; Jian Yi; Jun Liu (2019). "The first complete pareiasaur skull from China". Acta Palaeontologica Sinica. 58 (2): 216–221.
^ Benton, Michael J. (2016). "The Chinese pareiasaurs" (PDF). Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 177 (4): 813–853. doi:10.1111/zoj.12389. hdl:1983/6d1a4f9b-a768-4b86-acb1-b3ad1f7ee885.