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If the crocodilian ancestors and other Triassic archosaurs were warm-blooded, this would help to resolve some evolutionary puzzles: The earliest crocodylomorphs, e.g., Terrestrisuchus, were slim, leggy terrestrial predators whose build suggests a fairly active lifestyle, which requires a fairly fast metabolism.
Archosauriformes (Greek for 'ruling lizards', and Latin for 'form') is a clade of diapsid reptiles encompassing archosaurs and some of their close relatives. It was defined by Jacques Gauthier (1994) as the clade stemming from the last common ancestor of Proterosuchidae and Archosauria. [3]
Archosaurus (meaning "ruling lizard") is an extinct genus of carnivorous proterosuchid archosauriform reptile. [1] Its fossils are dated to the latest Permian of Russia and Poland , it is one of the earliest known archosauriforms.
Modern paleontologists define Archosauria as a crown group that includes the most recent common ancestor of living birds and crocodilians, and all of its descendants. The base of Archosauria splits into two clades: Pseudosuchia , which includes crocodilians and their extinct relatives, and Avemetatarsalia , which includes birds and their ...
An equivalent term for the crocodilian side of the archosaur family tree is Pseudosuchia. This traditional definition of Crurotarsi assumed that phytosaurs were crown-group archosaurs and more closely related to crocodilians than to birds. However, a 2011 study argued that the phytosaur lineage evolved prior to the split between birds and ...
The name Pseudosuchia was originally given to a group of superficially crocodile-like prehistoric reptiles from the Triassic period, but fell out of use in the late 20th century, especially after the name Crurotarsi was established in 1990 to label the clade (evolutionary grouping) of archosaurs encompassing most reptiles previously identified as pseudosuchians.
Proterosuchidae is an early family of basal archosauriforms whose fossils are known from the Late Permian and the Early Triassic.The highest diversity of genera is known from European Russia, but fossils are also known from South Africa, India, China, Australia, Brazil and possibly Argentina. [1]
Rutiodon, one of the aquatic and superficially crocodile-like phytosaurs. Thecodontia (meaning 'socket-teeth'), now considered an obsolete taxonomic grouping, was formerly used to describe a diverse "order" of early archosaurian reptiles that first appeared in the latest Permian period and flourished until the end of the Triassic period.