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Protorosaur
Protorosauria is an extinct polyphyletic group of archosauromorph reptiles from the latest Middle Permian (Capitanian stage) to the end of the Late Triassic ( Rhaetian stage) of Asia, Europe and North America. It was named by the English anatomist and paleontologist Thomas Henry Huxley in 1871 as an order, originally to solely contain ''Protorosaurus''. Other names which were once considered equivalent to Protorosauria include Prolacertiformes and Prolacertilia. Protorosaurs are distinguished by their long necks formed by elongated cervical vertebrae, which have ribs that extend backward to the vertebrae behind them. Protorosaurs also have a gap between the quadrate bones and the jugal bones in the back of the skull near the jaw joint, making their skulls resemble those of lizards. While previously thought to be monophyletic, the group is now though to consist of various groups of basal archosauromorph reptiles that lie outside Crocopoda. Classification Protorosauria was ...
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Dinocephalosauridae
Dinocephalosauridae is an extinct clade of marine and terrestrial archosauromorph reptiles that lived throughout the Triassic period. Like tanystropheids, they are characterized by their long necks, lengthened by either addition of cervical vertebrae or elongation of the individual bones. Dinocephalosaurids are known from Europe (Poland, Germany, Austria, Netherlands) and China. Some members (i.e. '' Dinocephalosaurus'') are solely marine animals, most likely living near the coastlines of the Tethys Ocean, while other members (i.e. ''Pectodens'' were purely terrestrial, suggesting wide ecological diversity in just the few known species in this family. Classification In 2021, a phylogenetic study was conducted by S. Spiekman, N. Fraser, and T. Schayer in an attempt to clarify the systematics of " protorosaur" groups. A total of 16 individual trees were found using different character scoring methods and unstable OTU Otu or OTU may refer to: * Otu: ** Otu, Iran, a village in M ...
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Tanystropheidae
Tanystropheidae is an extinct family of mostly marine archosauromorph reptiles that lived throughout the Triassic Period. They are characterized by their long, stiff necks formed from elongated cervical vertebrae with very long cervical ribs. Some tanystropheids such as ''Tanystropheus'' had necks that were several meters long, longer than the rest of their bodies. Tanystropheids are known from Europe, Asia (Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia), North America and probably South America (Brazil). The presence of tanystropheids in Europe and China indicate that they lived along much of the coastline of the Tethys Ocean. However, species in western North America are found in terrestrial deposits, suggesting that as a group, tanystropheids were ecologically diverse. Relationships among tanystropheid species have been difficult to resolve because most specimens were flattened during fossilization and are preserved two-dimensionally. Three-dimensional fossils are known from Europe and N ...
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Mecistotrachelos
''Mecistotrachelos'' is an extinct genus of gliding reptile believed to be an archosauromorph, distantly related to crocodylians and dinosaurs. The type and only known species is ''M. apeoros''. This specific name translates to "soaring longest neck", in reference to its gliding habits and long neck. This superficially lizard-like animal was able to spread its lengthened ribs and glide on wing-like membranes. ''Mecistotrachelos'' had a much longer neck than other gliding reptiles of the Triassic such as ''Icarosaurus'' and '' Kuehneosaurus''. It was probably an arboreal insectivore. Discovery ''Mecistotrachelos'' is known from several fossil specimens excavated from the Solite quarry from the Cow Branch Formation on the Virginia-North Carolina border. However, only two of these have been formally described in a scientific journal. The first fossil was found in 1994 and the second fossil eight years later by Nick Fraser, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Virginia Museum of N ...
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Protorosaurus Speneri
''Protorosaurus'' ("first lizard") is a genus of lizard-like early reptiles. Members of the genus lived during the late Permian period in what is now Germany and Great Britain. Once believed to have been an ancestor to lizards, ''Protorosaurus'' is now known to be one of the oldest and most primitive members of Archosauromorpha, the group that would eventually lead to archosaurs such as crocodilians and dinosaurs. Description ''Protorosaurus'' grew up to in length, and was a slender, lizard-like animal, vaguely resembling a monitor lizard, with long legs and a long neck. Discovery ''Protorosaurus'' was one of the first fossil reptiles to be described, being initially described in Latin in 1710 by from a specimen found in Thuringia in Germany, who considered the animal to be a crocodile, and most similar to the Nile crocodile (''C. niloticus''). Over a century later, in publications in 1830 and 1832 Hermann von Meyer recognised ''Protorosaurus'' as distinct extinct rep ...
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Protorosaurus
''Protorosaurus'' ("first lizard") is a genus of lizard-like early reptiles. Members of the genus lived during the late Permian period in what is now Germany and Great Britain. Once believed to have been an ancestor to lizards, ''Protorosaurus'' is now known to be one of the oldest and most primitive members of Archosauromorpha, the group that would eventually lead to archosaurs such as crocodilians and dinosaurs. Description ''Protorosaurus'' grew up to in length, and was a slender, lizard-like animal, vaguely resembling a monitor lizard, with long legs and a long neck. Discovery ''Protorosaurus'' was one of the first fossil reptiles to be described, being initially described in Latin in 1710 by from a specimen found in Thuringia in Germany, who considered the animal to be a crocodile, and most similar to the Nile crocodile (''C. niloticus''). Over a century later, in publications in 1830 and 1832 Hermann von Meyer recognised ''Protorosaurus'' as distinct extinct reptile a ...
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Czatkowiella
''Czatkowiella'' is an extinct genus of long-necked archosauromorph known from Early Triassic (Olenekian age) rocks of Czatkowice 1, Poland. It was first named by Magdalena Borsuk−Białynicka and Susan E. Evans in 2009 and the type species is ''Czatkowiella harae''. Phylogeny Cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to d ... after Borsuk−Białynicka & Evans (2009). Cladogram after Spiekman ''et al.'' 2021: References Prehistoric archosauromorphs Prehistoric reptile genera Olenekian genera Early Triassic reptiles of Europe Fossils of Poland Fossil taxa described in 2009 {{triassic-reptile-stub ...
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Extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence. More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryote globally, and possibly many times more if microorganisms, like bacteria, are included. Notable extinct animal species include non-avian dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, dodos, m ...
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Polyphyly
A polyphyletic group is an assemblage of organisms or other evolving elements that is of mixed evolutionary origin. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as homoplasies, which are explained as a result of convergent evolution. The arrangement of the members of a polyphyletic group is called a polyphyly .. ource for pronunciation./ref> It is contrasted with monophyly and paraphyly. For example, the biological characteristic of warm-bloodedness evolved separately in the ancestors of mammals and the ancestors of birds; "warm-blooded animals" is therefore a polyphyletic grouping. Other examples of polyphyletic groups are algae, C4 photosynthetic plants, and edentates. Many taxonomists aim to avoid homoplasies in grouping taxa together, with a goal to identify and eliminate groups that are found to be polyphyletic. This is often the stimulus for major revisions of the classification schemes. Researchers concerned more with ecology than with system ...
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Archosauromorph
Archosauromorpha (Greek for "ruling lizard forms") is a clade of diapsid reptiles containing all reptiles more closely related to archosaurs (such as crocodilians and dinosaurs, including birds) rather than lepidosaurs (such as tuataras, lizards, and snakes). Archosauromorphs first appeared during the late Middle Permian or Late Permian, though they became much more common and diverse during the Triassic period. Although Archosauromorpha was first named in 1946, its membership did not become well-established until the 1980s. Currently Archosauromorpha encompasses four main groups of reptiles: the stocky, herbivorous allokotosaurs and rhynchosaurs, the hugely diverse Archosauriformes, and a polyphyletic grouping of various long-necked reptiles including ''Protorosaurus'', tanystropheids, and ''Prolacerta''. Other groups including pantestudines (turtles and their extinct relatives) and the semiaquatic choristoderes have also been placed in Archosauromorpha by some authors. A ...
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Capitanian
In the geologic timescale, the Capitanian is an age or stage of the Permian. It is also the uppermost or latest of three subdivisions of the Guadalupian Epoch or Series. The Capitanian lasted between and million years ago. It was preceded by the Wordian and followed by the Wuchiapingian.; 2004: ''A Geologic Time Scale 2004'', Cambridge University Press A significant mass extinction event occurred at the end of this stage, which was associated with anoxia and acidification in the oceans and possibly caused by the volcanic eruptions that produced the Emeishan Traps. This extinction event may be related to the much larger Permian–Triassic extinction event that followed about 10 million years later. Stratigraphy The Capitanian Stage was introduced into scientific literature by George Burr Richardson in 1904. The name comes from the Capitan Reef in the Guadalupe Mountains (Texas, United States). The Capitanian was first used as a stratigraphic subdivision of the Guadalupian in 1 ...
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Middle Permian
The Guadalupian is the second and middle series/epoch of the Permian. The Guadalupian was preceded by the Cisuralian and followed by the Lopingian. It is named after the Guadalupe Mountains of New Mexico and Texas, and dates between 272.95 ± 0.5 – 259.1 ± 0.4 Mya. The series saw the rise of the therapsids, a minor extinction event called Olson's Extinction and a significant mass extinction called the end-Capitanian extinction event. The Guadalupian was previously known as the Middle Permian. Name and background The Guadalupian is the second and middle series or epoch of the Permian. Previously called Middle Permian, the name of this epoch is part of a revision of Permian stratigraphy for standard global correlation. The name "Guadalupian" was first proposed in the early 1900s, and approved by the International Subcommission on Permian Stratigraphy in 1996. References to the Middle Permian still exist. The Guadalupian was preceded by the Cisuralian and followed by the Lop ...
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Rhaetian
The Rhaetian is the latest age of the Triassic Period (in geochronology) or the uppermost stage of the Triassic System (in chronostratigraphy). It was preceded by the Norian and succeeded by the Hettangian (the lowermost stage or earliest age of the Jurassic). The base of the Rhaetian lacks a formal GSSP, though candidate sections include Steinbergkogel in Austria (since 2007) and Pignola-Abriola in Italy (since 2016). The end of the Rhaetian (and the base of the overlying Hettangian Stage) is more well-defined. According to the current ICS (International Commission on Stratigraphy) system, the Rhaetian ended ± 0.2 Ma (million years ago). In 2010, the base of the Rhaetian (i.e. the Norian-Rhaetian boundary) was voted to be defined based on the first appearance of '' Misikella posthernsteini'', a marine conodont. However, there is still much debate over the age of this boundary, as well as the evolution of ''M. posthernsteini''. The most comprehensive source of precise age ...
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