Prolacerta

Prolacerta is a genus of archosauromorph from the lower Triassic of South Africa and Antarctica. The only known species is Prolacerta broomi. The generic name Prolacerta is derived from Latin meaning “before lizard” and its species name broomi is in commemoration of the famous paleontologist Robert Broom, who discovered and studied many of the fossils found in rocks of the Karoo Supergroup. When first discovered, Prolacerta was considered to be ancestral to modern lizards, scientifically known as lacertilians. However, a study by Gow (1975) instead found that it shared more similarities with the lineage that would lead to archosaurs such as crocodilians and dinosaurs (including birds). Prolacerta is considered by modern paleontologists to be among the closest relatives of the Archosauriformes. Prolacerta was first described by Francis Rex Parrington in 1935 from a single skull recovered near the small town, Middelburg, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The fossil was recovered from an exposure of rock from the Katberg Formation in the Lystrosaurus Assemblage Zone. At the time, Parrington described the first Prolacerta fossil, the early evolutionary relationships of archosaurs was even more poorly understood than they are currently. Due to its small size and lizard-like appearance, Parrington subsequently placed Prolacerta between basal younginids and modern lizards. Parrington's classification of Prolacerta was accepted for several decades, including by the paleontologist Charles Lewis Camp who conducted further research on Prolacerta. It was only after more Prolacerta fossils were found that more in depth research was undertaken on this animal. In the 1970s the close link between Prolacerta and crown archosaurs was first hypothesized, which lead to numerous phylogenetic analyses being conducted on Prolacerta and other stem archosaurs from the 1980s onwards. Prolacerta were small reptiles that lived during the Induan and Olenekian stages of the lower Triassic.