sphenodon

From the genus name Sphenodon.

sphenodon (plural sphenodons)

1. The tuatara.
   • 2003, Michael King, The Penguin History of Aotearoa New Zealand, Penguin, published 2023, page 4:

     In New Zealand the dinosaurs had perished 65 million years before, as they had elsewhere on the globe; but the sphenodons or tuataras who had been their contemporaries from Jurassic times persisted, in New Zealand but nowhere else, for reasons that remain obscure.

2. Any of the other extinct reptiles of the Sphenodontidae family.

• sphenodont

• “sphenodon”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.

• sphenodon on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• sphenodon on Wikispecies.Wikispecies