Therocephalia is an extinct clade of eutheriodont therapsids from the Permian and Triassic. The therocephalians ("beast-heads") are named after their large skulls, which, along with the structure of their teeth, suggest that they were carnivores. Like other non-mammalian synapsids, therocephalians were once described as "mammal-like reptiles". Therocephalia is the group most closely related to the cynodonts, which gave rise to the mammals. This relationship takes evidence in a variety of skeletal features.
The fossils of therocephalians are numerous in the Karoo of South Africa, but have also been found in Russia, China, Tanzania, Zambia, and Antarctica. Early therocephalian fossils discovered in Middle Permian deposits of South Africa support a Gondwanan origin for the group, which seems to have spread quickly across Earth. The genera Euchambersia and Ichibengops, dating from the Lopingian, particularly attract the attention of paleontologists, because the fossil skulls attributed to them have some structures which suggests that these two animals had organs for distributing venom. Although almost every therocephalian lineage ended during the great Permian–Triassic extinction event, a few representatives of the subgroup called Eutherocephalia survived into the Early Triassic. However, the last therocephalians became extinct by the early Middle Triassic, possibly due to climate change and competition with cynodonts and various groups of reptiles.
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