Bolosauridae

Bolosauridae
Temporal range: Latest Carboniferous or earliest Permian to Middle Permian, Asselian–268
Life restoration of Belebey vegrandis
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Clade: †Parareptilia
Order: †Procolophonomorpha
Node: †Procolophoniformes
Family: †Bolosauridae
Cope, 1878

Bolosauridae is an extinct family of parareptiles known from the latest Carboniferous (Gzhelian) or earliest Permian (Asselian) to the early Guadalupian epoch (latest Roadian stage) of North America, China, Germany, Russia and France.[1][2] The bolosaurids were unusual for their time period by being bipedal, the oldest known tetrapods to have been so. Their teeth suggest that they were herbivores. The bolosaurids were a rare group and died out without any known descendants. The following cladogram shows the phylogenetic position of the Bolosauridae, from Johannes Müller, Jin-Ling Li and Robert R. Reisz, 2008.[3]

Bolosauridae
  1. ^ Marcello Ruta; Juan C. Cisneros; Torsten Liebrect; Linda A. Tsuji; Johannes Muller (2011). "Amniotes through major biological crises: faunal turnover among Parareptiles and the end-Permian mass extinction". Palaeontology. 54 (5): 1117–1137. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2011.01051.x.
  2. ^ Jocelyn Falconnet (2012). "First evidence of a bolosaurid parareptile in France (latest Carboniferous-earliest Permian of the Autun basin) and the spatiotemporal distribution of the Bolosauridae". Bulletin de la Société Géologique de France. 183 (6): 495–508. doi:10.2113/gssgfbull.183.6.495.
  3. ^ Johannes Müller; Jin-Ling Li & Robert R. Reisz (2008). "A new bolosaurid parareptile, Belebey chengi sp. nov., from the Middle Permian of China and its paleogeographic significance". Naturwissenschaften. 95 (12): 1169–1174. doi:10.1007/s00114-008-0438-0. PMID 18726080.