Younginiformes

Younginiformes
Temporal range: Permian-Triassic
Hovasaurus.
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Sauropsida
Subclass: Diapsida
(unranked)? Neodiapsida

Benton, 1985

Order: Eosuchia (defunct)
Superfamily: Younginiformes
Subgroups

†Tangasauridae
†Younginidae

Younginiformes is a replacement name for the taxon Eosuchia, proposed by Alfred Romer in 1947.

The Eosuchia having become rather a dustbin for many probably distantly-related primitive diapsid reptiles ranging from the late Carboniferous to the Eocene, Romer proposed that this be replaced by Younginiformes, to include the Younginidae and a very few similar families, ranging from the Permian to the Triassic.

Younginiformes (including Acerosodontosaurus, Hovasaurus, Kenyasaurus, Tangasaurus, Thadeosaurus, Youngina, et alia sensu Currie and other researchers in the 1980s) is probably not a clade. It appears to represent a grade of South African Permo-Triassic diapsids that are not more closely related to each other as a whole than they are to other reptiles.[1]

References

  1. ↑ Bickelmann, Müller, and Reisz. 2009. The enigmatic diapsid Acerosodontosaurus piveteaui (Reptilia: Neodiapsida) from the Upper Permian of Madagascar and the paraphyly of “younginiform” reptiles. Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 46 (9): 651-661.