Palaeos Vertebrates: Anapsida: Classification

The following rather hasty and hence somewhat incomplete page uses Linnaean taxonomy, but is rather dramatically modified from our usual refernce source of Carroll 1988. We have replaced the old Cotylosauria here with three orders: Eunotosauria, Mesosauria, and Procolophonomorpha. The predominance of monotypal taxa show that either early anapsids showed great morphological diversity, early paleobntologists loved to coin new high rank taxa or, more likely, both. For the cladistic equivalent, see the dendrogram page MAK120328

Subclass Anapsida Osborn, 1903 (= Anapsida Williston, 1917) [1] (cont.) Order Eunotosauria Watson, 1917 [2] (= Superfamily Millerosauroidea Romer, 1966) Family Millerettidae Romer, 1945 small, insectivorous, lizardlike forms, Mid to Late Perm of SAfr Family Eunotosauridae Haughton & Brink, 1954 monotypal family for Eunotosaurus, convergent with turtles, Mid Perm of S Afr Order Mesosauria Seeley, 1892 monotypal order for Mesosauridae only Family Mesosauridae Baur, 1889 monotypal family of small aquatic reptiles - Early Permian of SAfr & Sth Am Order Procolophonomorpha [3] Romer, 1964 an assemblage of primitive, mostly lizard- or amphibian-like Permo-Triassic reptiles, with a few aberrant large forms Suborder Lanthanosuchida Carroll, Kuhn & Tatarinov, 1972 (= Superfamily Lanthanosuchoidea) Family Acleistorhinidae Daly, 1969 Family Lanthanosuchidae Efremov, 1946 Suborder Bolosauroia Kuhn, 1959 monotypal for Bolosauridae only Family Bolosauridae Cope, 1878 faculatively bipedal, insectivorous, lizardlike forms, Early Perm of WEur, EEur, NAm, & EEas Suborder Procolophonia Seeley, 1888 Superfamily "Nyctiphruretoidea"[4] Lee 1995 - ancestral procolophonians Family Nyctiphruretidae Efremov, 1938 - monotypal family for basal taxon Nyctiphruretus , Mid Perm of EEur Family Nycteroleteridae Subfamily Tokosaurinae - monotypal subfamily for basal taxon Macroleter (=Tokosaurus), Mid Perm of EEur Subfamily Nycteroleterinae - small, insectivorous, lizardlike forms, Mid Perm of EEur, NAm, & SAfr Subfamily Rhipaeosaurinae Chudinov, 1955 - monotypal subfamily for Rhipaeosaurus, Mid Perm of EEur Superfamily Pareiasauroidea Cope, 1869 (sensu Nopcsa, 1928) - monotypal superfamily for Pareiasaurs Family Pareiasauridae Lydekker 1889 = Pareiasauridae Cope, 1869 - medium to very large armoured herbivores, Mid to Late Perm of Afr, Eur, EEur, SthAm, EAs Subfamily Bradysaurinae Huene 1948 Includes only the very large, primitive, early genus Bradysaurus Mid Perm of Sth Afr Subfamily Pareiasaurinae Nopcsa 1923. paraphyletic assemblage of large to very large, moderately armoured typical Pareiasaurs, Mid to Late Perm of Afr, Eur, EEur, SthAm, EAs Subfamily Elgininae Cope, 1895 monotypal taxon for Elginia mirabilis, a smallish, spiny headed pareiasaur from the Late Perm of WEur Subfamily Pumiliopareiasaurinae [5] Jalil & Janvier 2005 small, advanced pareiasaurs, strongly advergent with turtles - Late Perm of SAfr & SAm Superfamily Procolophonoidea Romer, 1956 Family Owenettidae Broom, 1939 small, insectivorous, lizard-like procolophonoids, Late Perm to Mid Trias of SAfr, Mad, & SAm Family Procolophonidae [6] Seeley, 1888 Subfamily Theledectinae Cisneros 2006 small, primitive, insectivorous forms, Early Trias of EEAs and Aus Subfamily Procolophoninae Seeley, 1888 advanced, herbivorous procolophonids with stocky bodies, triangular skulls, and chisel-like teeth, Early to Mid Trias of SAfr, Ant, SAm, & EEAs Subfamily Leptopleuroninae Ivakhenko, 1982 (= Telerpetontidae Lydekker, 1888) advanced herbivorous, spiny-headed procolophonids, Early to Late Trias of WEur, EAs, NAm, & SAm, Subfamily [7] Sclerosaurinae Nopcsa, 1923 monotypal taxon for Sclerosaurus armatus, a large, wide-bodied procolophonid convergent with pareiasaurs, Early Trias of WEur

[1] as paraphyletic stem taxon sensu Carroll, not a monophyletic clade sensu Gauthier, Resiz, etc. If turtles (order Chelonii) turn out to be diapsids, then Anapsida would become polyphyletic, and this subclass could appropriately be renamed Parareptilia. For now we are going with the more traditional, anapasid origin, hypothesis. MAK120326

[2] we are following Cisneros et al 2008 and Tsuji et al 2012 in including the eunotosaurs with or under the millerettids. This synonymises the Eunotosauria and the Millerosauroidea. The Order Eunotosauria Watson, 1917 also has priority over Millerosauria Watson 1957 and Promillerosauria Kuhn, 1959. Although Eunotosauridae would be included under a monophyletic family Millerettidae (Cisneros et al 2008), we have retained it as a distinct Linnaean taxon because of Eunotosaurus' great morphological distinction. MAK120328

[6] Subfamily Spondylolestinae Ivakhenko, 1979 is usually include din taxaonomic lists, but we have not retained it as it is a polyphyletic taxon of assorted primitive forms procolophonoidsas currently defined. Some are not procolophonids (Candelaria is an owenettid), some are poorly known or indeterminate, and some have been reassigned to other subfamilies. Spondylolestinae coukld still be a valid taxon if applied only to Spondylolestes and related forms MAK120328

[7] which would make the Leptopleuroninae paraphyletic, although this is not a problem for linnaean/evolutionary systematic classifications