Eureptilia

Eureptiles
Temporal range:
PennsylvanianPresent, 312–0 Ma
Labidosaurikos meachami, an early eureptilian of the family Captorhinidae
Scientific classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Clade: Eureptilia
Olson, 1947
Subgroups
Skull of Hylonomus, a eureptile and one of the oldest known reptiles

Eureptilia ("true reptiles") is one of the two major subgroups of the clade Sauropsida, the other one being Parareptilia. Eureptilia includes Diapsida (the clade containing all modern reptiles and birds), as well as a number of primitive Permo-Carboniferous forms previously classified under Anapsida, in the old (no longer recognised) order "Cotylosauria".

Eureptilia is characterized by the skull having greatly reduced supraoccipital, tabular, and supratemporal bones that are no longer in contact with the postorbital. Aside from Diapsida, the group notably contains Captorhinidae, a diverse and long lived (Late Carboniferous-Late Permian) clade of initially small carnivores that later evolved into large herbivores. Other primitive eureptiles such as Hylonomus and "protorothyrids" were all small, superficially lizard-like forms, that were probably insectivorous. One primitive eureptile, the Late Carboniferous "protorothyrid" Anthracodromeus, is the oldest known climbing tetrapod. Diapsids were the only eureptilian clade to continue beyond the end of the Permian.

Classification

Eureptilia was defined as a stem-based clade, specifically, the most inclusive clade containing Captorhinus aguti and Petrolacosaurus kansensis but not Procolophon trigoniceps, by Tsuji and Müller (2009). The cladogram here was modified after Muller and Reisz (2006):

Reptilia 

Parareptilia

 Eureptilia 

Coelostegus

Thuringothyris

Captorhinidae

Brouffia

Paleothyris

Hylonomus

Protorothyrididae

Diapsida


This page was last updated at 2023-09-17 09:53 UTC. Update now. View original page.

All our content comes from Wikipedia and under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.


Top

If mathematical, chemical, physical and other formulas are not displayed correctly on this page, please useFirefox or Safari