Dromasaurs are a

paraphyletic In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...

group of

anomodont Anomodontia is an extinct group of non-mammalian therapsids from the Permian and Triassic periods. By far the most speciose group are the dicynodonts, a clade of beaked, tusked herbivores.Chinsamy-Turan, A. (2011) ''Forerunners of Mammals: Ra ...

therapsids Therapsida is a major group of eupelycosaurian synapsids that includes mammals, their ancestors and relatives. Many of the traits today seen as unique to mammals had their origin within early therapsids, including limbs that were oriented mor ...

from the

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. ...

. They were small with slender legs and long tails. Their skulls were short, but the eye sockets were large. Dromasauria was once considered to be a major group of basal anomodonts along with the infraorder

Venyukovioidea Venyukovioidea is an infraorder of anomodont therapsids related to dicynodonts from the Permian of Russia. They have also known as Venjukovioidea, as well as by the similar names Venyukoviamorpha or Venjukoviamorpha in literature. This in part ...

. It includes the genera ''

Galepus ''Galepus'' is an extinct genus of anomodont therapsids. See also * List of therapsids This list of therapsids is an attempt to create a comprehensive listing of all genera that have ever been included in the Therapsida excluding mammals ...

'', ''

Galechirus ''Galechirus'' is an extinct genus of anomodont therapsids. It was about 30 cm (1 ft) long. Description ''Galechirus'' was lizard-like in appearance. It is considered to be a dicynodont by some paleontologists; others think ''Galech ...

'', and ''

Galeops ''Galeops'' is an extinct genus of anomodont therapsids from the Middle-Late Permian of South Africa. It was described by Robert Broom in 1912. Some cladistic analyses have recovered it as closely related to dicynodonts. See also * List of ther ...

'', all from southern

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

. Below is a

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 ...

based on Modesto and Rubidge (2000), Liu ''et al.'' (2009) and Cisneros ''et al.'' (2011):

References

Anomodonts Paraphyletic groups {{anomodont-stub