| Type | Synapsid, likely belonging to the clade of Dinocephalia |
| First sight | 1946 |
| Last sight | unknown |
| Country | South Africa |
| Habitat | Open Forest ,mountain |
| Possible population | small |
When there were sightings of a giant 3 m reptile in the Karoo in 1946, the famous fossil discoveries in that region made the press believe it was a living Permian therapsid. Of course, there's no reason to assume that was the case, and Heuvelmans and Coudray suggest that it was a giant monitor lizard. The contemporary identification as a therapsid is more of an historical curiosity than anything else.
Perhaps I should have thought a little before posting my original response, because I'm just now remembering that Bruce Champagne, very bizarrely, identifies some of his sea serpent types (including his giant turtle type) as mammal-like reptiles. Explanation: Dinocephalian fossils are found in abundance in the Karoo, being the richest site of Permian fossils in the world. Dinophali were hibernating what I believe to be a distant descendant of them to have evolved in the last 250 million years. [1]