''Ruhuhuaria'' is an

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 ...

genus of

owenettid Owenettidae is an extinct family of procolophonian parareptiles. Fossils have been found primarily from Africa and Madagascar, with one genus present from South America. It is the sister taxon to the family Procolophonidae. The family was constr ...

procolophonoid Procolophonoidea is an extinct superfamily of procolophonian parareptiles. Members were characteristically small, stocky, and lizard-like in appearance. Fossils have been found worldwide from many continents including Antarctica. The first memb ...

reptile Reptiles, as most commonly defined are the animals in the class Reptilia ( ), a paraphyletic grouping comprising all sauropsids except birds. Living reptiles comprise turtles, crocodilians, squamates (lizards and snakes) and rhynchocephalians ( ...

known from the Middle Triassic Manda Beds of southwestern Tanzania. ''Ruhuhuaria'' is known solely from the holotype CAMZM T997, poorly preserved but complete skull and mandible recently re-discovered in the collections of the Cambridge Museum of Zoology. It was collected by the English paleontologist

Francis Rex Parrington Francis Rex Parrington (20 February 1905 – 17 April 1981) was a British vertebrate palaeontologist and comparative anatomist at the University of Cambridge. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he was director of the Cambridge University Museum of Zoo ...

in the early 1930s from the Lifua Member of Manda Beds of the Ruhuhu Basin in

Songea Urban District Songea Urban District is one of the five districts in the Ruvuma Region of Tanzania. It is bordered to the north by the Songea Rural District, to the east by the Namtumbo District, to the south by Mozambique and to the west by the Mbinga Distric ...

of southwestern Tanzania, which dates back to the late Anisian stage of the Middle Triassic. ''Ruhuhuaria'' was first described and named by Linda Akiko Tsuji, Gabriela Sobral and Johannes Müller in

2013 File:2013 Events Collage V2.png, From left, clockwise: Edward Snowden becomes internationally famous for leaking classified NSA wiretapping information; Typhoon Haiyan kills over 6,000 in the Philippines and Southeast Asia; The Dhaka garment fact ...

and the type species is ''Ruhuhuaria reiszi''. The generic name is derived from the name of the Ruhuhu Basin. The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

, ''reiszi'', honors the Canadian paleontologist

Robert R. Reisz Robert Rafael Reisz is a Canadian paleontologist and specialist in the study of early amniote and tetrapod evolution. Research career Reisz received his B.Sc. (1969), M.Sc. (1971) and Ph.D. (1975) from McGill University as Robert L. Carroll ...

. Due to the poor preservation of the holotype, the phylogenetic position of ''Ruhuhuaria'' within

Owenettidae Owenettidae is an extinct family of procolophonian parareptiles. Fossils have been found primarily from Africa and Madagascar, with one genus present from South America. It is the sister taxon to the family Procolophonidae. The family was constr ...

is uncertain. ''Ruhuhuaria'' being the second youngest owenettid to date, supports the persistence of owenettids into the Middle Triassic and their coexistence with procolophonids.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q16758255 Procolophonomorphs Triassic parareptiles Anisian life Middle Triassic reptiles of Africa Triassic Tanzania Fossils of Tanzania Fossil taxa described in 2013 Prehistoric reptile genera