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Lycaenops ("Wolf-Face") was a lightly built-meat-eater with long legs. It was about 3 feet long (1 meters) and lived in the late Middle Permian to early Late Permian, living in what is now South Africa. Like the wolf of today, Lycaenops had a long and slender skull, with a very long set of dog-like canine teeth set into both upper and lower jaws. Pointed canine teeth were ideal for stabbing and tearing at the flesh of large prey. It probably hunted small vertebrates such as reptiles, small pelycosaurs, and dicynodonts such as Robertia and Cistecephalus, as well as larger dicynodonts. Lycaenops may have been a pack animal, living and hunting with others of its kind. Lycaenops walked and ran with its long legs held close to its body. This is a feature found on mammals, but not in more primitive amniotes and synapsids, such as the pelycosaurs and early reptiles whose legs are positioned to the sides of their bodies. The ability to move like a mammal would have given Lycaenops an advantage over other land vertebrates/animals, since it would have able to out-run them.
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