semaphoront

noun

1. (rare)An organism as seen in a specific time during its ontogeny or life cycle, as the object of identification or basis for systematics.

   “2024, Andea Cau, "A Unified Framework for Predatory Dinosaur Macroevolution", Bollettino della Società Paleontologica Italiana 63, page iii. […] coding such characters for taxonomic units based uniquely on immature specimens is believed to be misleading, because it cannot be excluded that the states expressed by the immature semaphoronts differ from those expressed by the mature semaphoronts of the same taxon.”