Dinocephalians form an important component of the Guadalupian basal therapsid faunas of Pangaea. Most research undertaken on this clade has focused on the skull while postcranial research has lagged, largely because of the rarity of sufficiently complete specimens. The discovery of an almost complete skeleton of the basal tapinocephalid dinocephalian Tapinocaninus from the rocks of the lowermost Beaufort Group of South Africa for the first time provides an accurate vertebral count for a dinocephalian as well as morphological information on the appendicular skeleton. The long bones of Tapinocaninus pamelae are autapomorphic in several features within the dinocephalians, and the results enable discussion of some more general aspects of the appendicular skeleton of basal synapsids. Combined, the new data enable a new reconstruction of the posture of tapinocephalids. Although demonstrating several apomorphic characters, the skeleton retains pleisomorphic anatomical features previously known only in pelycosaur-grade synapsids, especially in the axial skeleton. The discovery greatly advances understanding of the postcranial morphology of tapinocephalid dinocephalians and will provide input on the enigmatic phylogenetic relationships of early therapsids.

恐龙属是潘加亚瓜达卢普基础治疗动物群的重要组成部分。在此进化枝上进行的大多数研究都集中在头骨上，而颅后研究则滞后了，这主要是由于足够完整的标本很少。首次从南非最下层的博福特集团的岩石中发现了一个几乎完整的基头锥头恐龙头颅锥齿骨骼，这为头颅骨的椎体数提供了准确的信息，并在阑尾骨骼上提供了形态学信息。墨西哥锥栗的长骨在头足类动物的几个特征中呈亚稳态，其结果使人们能够讨论基底突触的阑尾骨架的一些更一般的方面。结合起来，新的数据可以重新构造tap头类动物的姿势。尽管显示了几个不定形特征，但骨骼保留了以前仅在剑突级突触中，特别是在轴向骨骼中才知道的多形解剖特征。这一发现极大地促进了对锥头恐龙头颅后形态的理解，并将为早期治疗方法的神秘系统发育关系提供参考。