Neoreptilia

Subdivisions

The traditional classification of sauropsids and eureptiles has been challenged in recent studies, with several studies in the early 2020s finding that "Parareptilia" is paraphyletic, and the supposed "eureptilian" captorhinids and Protorothyris are not even sauropsids, but stem-amniotes, and that araeoscelidians are not closely related to true diapsids, if they are even sauropsids at all, and that the famous "earliest reptile" Hylonomus may also not be a true sauropsid. In 2019 the new clade Neoreptilia was coined as the clade uniting Parareptilia and Neodiapsida, under the phylogenetic hypothesis that parareptiles were monophyletic and relatively derived, placed as closer to neodiapsids than araeoscelidians, Hylonomus, "protorothyrids" and varanopids (the last of which are conventionally viewed as synapsids). This clade was later reused by other scholars in a different sense to include parts of former Parareptilia that were considered close to Neodiapsida, which in one paper included only Procolophonia, and Neodiapsida, while another paper included Mesosauria and Acleistorhinidae within Neoreptilia in addition to the aforementioned taxa.