Nyctiphruretidae is an extinct

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

of hallucicranian

parareptile Parareptilia ("at the side of reptiles") is a subclass or clade of basal sauropsids (reptiles), typically considered the sister taxon to Eureptilia (the group that likely contains all living reptiles and birds). Parareptiles first arose near th ...

s known from the late Early to the late

Middle Permian The Guadalupian is the second and middle series/ epoch of the Permian. The Guadalupian was preceded by the Cisuralian and followed by the Lopingian. It is named after the Guadalupe Mountains of New Mexico and Texas, and dates between 272.95 ± ...

of European Russia and south-central United States. Nyctiphruretidae was named by Efremov in 1938. The

type genus In biological taxonomy, the type genus is the genus which defines a biological family and the root of the family name. Zoological nomenclature According to the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, "The name-bearing type of a nominal ...

is '' Nyctiphruretus'' known from several Middle Permian locations in European Russia. Michael S. Y. Lee in 1997 placed the family in the larger clade Nyctiphruretia. The order was defined to include both nyctiphruretids and

nycteroleterid Nycteroleteridae is a family of procolophonian parareptilians (extinct early reptiles) from the Middle to Late Permian of Russia and North America. They are sometimes classified as a sister group to pareiasaurids (but see ''Classification)'' ...

s. However, recent

cladistic Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups ("clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived char ...

analyses suggest that

s are more closely related to the

Pareiasauria Pareiasaurs (meaning "cheek lizards") are an extinct clade of large, herbivorous parareptiles. Members of the group were armoured with scutes which covered large areas of the body. They first appeared in southern Pangea during the Middle Permian ...

instead, thus making ''Nyctiphruretus'' the only genus of its order. In 2014, MacDougall & Reisz described and named a second genus of Nyctiphruretidae, ''

Abyssomedon ''Abyssomedon'' (meaning "Guardian of the Abyss") is an extinct genus of a nyctiphruretid parareptile known from Early Permian (Artinskian age) fissure fills at Richards Spur in Comanche County, Oklahoma, south-central United States. It contain ...

'', from the middle

Leonardian In the geologic timescale, the Kungurian is an age or stage of the Permian. It is the latest or upper of four subdivisions of the Cisuralian Epoch or Series. The Kungurian lasted between and million years ago (Ma). It was preceded by the Artin ...

stage of the late Early Permian of

Comanche County, Oklahoma Comanche County is a county located in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2010 census, the population was 124,098, making it the fourth-most populous county in Oklahoma. Its county seat is Lawton. The county was created in 1901 as part of ...

, south-central United States. It contains a single species, ''A. williamsi'', which represents the first nyctiphruretid known from North America, and the oldest species of the family.

Phylogeny

Before the discovery of ''Abyssomedon'', all

phylogenetic analyses In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

including Säilä (2010) and Tsuji ''et al.'' (2012) recovered Nyctiphruretidae, which was represented solely by ''N. acudens'', as the

sister taxon In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and ...

Procolophonia The Procolophonia are a suborder of herbivorous reptiles that lived from the Middle Permian till the end of the Triassic period. They were originally included as a suborder of the Cotylosauria (later renamed Captorhinida Carroll 1988) but are ...

. However, the addition of ''Abyssomedon'' by MacDougall and Reisz (2014) to an updated version of the Tsuji ''et al.'' (2012) data-set, recovered a monophyletic Nyctiphruretidae, nested within Procolophonia as the sister taxon of Procolophonoidea - a clade formed by

owenettid Owenettidae is an extinct family of procolophonian parareptiles. Fossils have been found primarily from Africa and Madagascar, with one genus present from South America. It is the sister taxon to the family Procolophonidae. The family was const ...

s and

procolophonid Procolophonidae is an extinct family of small, lizard-like parareptiles known from the Late Permian to Late Triassic that were distributed across Pangaea, having been reported from Europe, North America, China, South Africa, South America, Antarc ...

s. The following

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to ...

is simplified after the phylogenetic analysis of MacDougall and Reisz (2014) and shows the placement of Nyctiphruretidae within

Parareptilia Parareptilia ("at the side of reptiles") is a subclass or clade of basal sauropsids (reptiles), typically considered the sister taxon to Eureptilia (the group that likely contains all living reptiles and birds). Parareptiles first arose near th ...

. Relationships within bolded terminal clades are not shown.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q21591533 Procolophonomorphs Permian reptiles of Europe Permian reptiles of North America Prehistoric reptile families