Bradysaurus is a pareiasaurid procolonomorph reptile from the Guadalupian of South Africa. It was named in 1914 by David Meredith Seares Watson. It was one of the earliest pareiasaurs, as well as the most common ones in South Africa.
Physiology[]
Bradysaurus resembled the generic pareiasaur. It was a reptile with 4 stout legs, a short tail, a broad, bulky body, and a relatively small head. Its body would have been covered in scaly skin, with crocodile-like scutes running down its back and lying in some other places of its body.
Diet[]
Bradysaurus was an herbivore, feeding on plants low to the ground. Its leaf-shaped teeth were used to process vegetation; behind its jaws, it had a second set of teeth for processing them even further.
Ecology[]
Like all pareiasaurs, Bradysaurus would have been a slow, clumsy, and mostly harmless animal, relying on its hard body armor to protect itself from predators like Anteosaurus. Despite the fact that those armor plates were well-developed, they were not as thick as those of later pareiasaurs such as Scutosaurus. As well as this, its somewhat large size showed that even in their early development, pareiasaurs reached an optimal size; further evidence comes from the fact that the later Scutosaurus was no larger. As well as this, Pareiasaurus was a solitary animal, but sometimes traveled in small herds for mutual protection.