A little-known name in the realm of dicynodonts—which makes it an especially unknown name outside that realm—is 'Fortunodon'. The name 'Fortunodon' has only ever been published twice in scientific literature, and one of those was the paper that coined the name in the first place, pretty well immediately fading into obscurity. It's only other appearance was in a list of dicynodont genera yet to be included in a phylogenetic analysis, as well as a brief appearance in at least one Russian book on Permian fauna.
'Fortunodon' was named as a replacement genus for 'Dicynodon' trautscholdi, a Russian dicynodont that was included in the massive over-stuffing of Dicynodon (the dicynodont dark ages). The name means "good-luck tooth", intended to refer to the very successful dicynodont skull design, and was named by Russian palaeontologist A. A. Kurkin in April of 2012. Kurkin also attributed another Russian Dicynodon species, 'Dicynodon' amalitzkii, to 'Fortunodon' as 'F.' amalitzkii. He considered them to be close relatives of Dicynodon, Delectosaurus and Vivaxosaurus and placed them together in the subfamily Dicynodontinae.
Keen readers who follow dicynodont taxonomy (there has to be at least one of you, surely) may be putting a few things together from these names and dates and know where this is going.
You see, only a few months prior in 2011, Christian Kammerer, Kenneth Angielczyk and Jörg Fröbisch published their landmark revision of the taxonomy of Dicynodon which finally cleaned up the taxonomic mess that had been building in that genus for centuries. In one fell swoop, Kammerer, Angielczyk and Fröbisch cut Dicynodon down from well over 30 accepted species to just two,* and resurrected numerous old forgotten names and coining as many new ones. Naturally, this revision included 'D.' trautscholdi and 'D.' amalitzkii.
(*Trivia: One of these later ended up in Daptocephalus, but another second species was named at the same time anyway. All's well that ends well for Dicynodon.)
After thorough comparisons, Kammerer and co. similarly concluded that 'D.' trautscholdi was distinct enough from Dicynodon to warrant separation. However, unlike Kurkin, they did not consider it distinct from Vivaxosaurus permirus, and chose to synonymise the two as Vivaxosaurus trautscholdi (the specific name 'D.' trautscholdi pre-dates the name Vivaxosaurus permirus and so has priority). 'D'. amalitzkii was also found to be distinct to warrant a separate genus, however it had no previous name to fall back on, nor could it confidently be referred to another genus, so Kammerer and co. erected the new name Peramodon to house it.
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| Restoration of Vivaxosaurus trautscholdi...or should that be 'Fortunodon'? By Dmitry Bogdanov, CC BY-SA 3.0 |
To recap the situation, in 2011 Kammerer synonymised 'Dicynodon' trautscholdi with Vivaxosaurus permirus, creating Vivaxosaurus trautscholdi, and split 'D'. amalitzkii into the new binomial Peramodon amalitzkii. In 2012, Kurkin also removed 'D.' trautscholdi from Dicynodon and named it the type species of a new genus, 'Fortunodon'. He also included 'D.' amalitzkii as a second species of 'Fortunodon', 'F.' amalitzkii.
Where does this leave us? Well, seeing how 'Fortunodon' has been almost completely ignored since it was named, in and out of the literature, there isn't really any official word on the matter. However, under the current circumstances the rules of priority imply that 'Fortunodon' (2012) is a junior synonym of Vivaxosaurus, on account of the type species 'F.' trautscholdi currently being included under that genus. Consequently, 'F'. amalitzkii is simply just Peramodon.
But what if Kurkin is correct, and 'D.' trautscholdi is actually a separate genus after all? Unfortunately, that still wouldn't cleanly bring back 'Fortunodon' because the first novel genus name to be applied to any of its species is Kammerer and co.'s Peramodon. The only possible way to salvage 'Fortunodon' is for 'F.' trautscholdi to be distinct from V. permirus, while at the same time restricting 'Fortunodon' to the type species and keeping 'F'. amalitzkii separate in Peramodon, a scheme which so far has never been suggested by any dicynodont workers, to my knowledge.
This particular catch-22 with Peramodon raises the question of why even name 'Fortunodon' in the first place as Kurkin conceived it (i.e. including P. amalitzkii) after Kammerer and co. published their taxonomy earlier? The answer here seems to just come down to unfortunate timing. While Kurkin's paper may have been published in April of 2012, it was received by its journal all the way back in March, 2011. Kammerer et al. submitted their paper two months later in May of 2011, was accepted in September, but wasn't published until December. Kurkin's paper was later finally published less than 4 months later, but by then Kammerer et al. had simply beaten him to the punch and it was probably too late to change anything at that stage.
So that's the story of 'Fortunodon' as best as I can put together. A complicated taxonomic tale caught up in scientific bureaucracy that dealt poor unfortunate 'Fortunodon' a losing hand after losing hand. Of course, this mostly from a western perspective, I'm not sure what the thoughts on 'Fortunodon' are over in Russia. However, given I've yet to see it reappear in another paper, period, I get the impression that it's either flown mostly under the radar and/or people are just content to ignore it and let the name fade away.
Perhaps 'Fortunodon' simply just wasn't quite that lucky, after all...
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| 'Fortunodon' trautscholdi emerges from its hole on the rare occasion someone mentions it by name. By Dmitry Bogdanov, CC BY-SA 3.0 (according to its license on DeviantART, at least, despite the watermark.) |
(If people who know better notice that I've made any taxonomic mistakes in this, please do correct me.)
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