What it is
A big, heavy plant-eater of the early Permian. It belongs to the diadectids, the same family as Orobates: close cousins of the ancestor that reptiles and mammals share.
The bitten bones
At Mud Hill, in Taylor County, Texas, a 1997 dam excavation exposed the bones of at least three young Diadectes. Even young, one of them weighed roughly 277 kilograms. A flood had carried the bodies into a pond that later dried, and they lay in the open. Their bones carry five kinds of marks: scores, pits, furrows and punctures from teeth, and tiny borings, probably from insect grubs.
Who ate them
Most of the tooth marks sit on the gristly joint ends. The researchers name Varanops, found at the site, as the primary candidate, with Dimetrodon and a big amphibian, Acheloma, as other possibilities. They cannot tell hunting from scavenging, and think most of the eating came after death.