Parasuchidae is a clade of

phytosaur Phytosaurs (Φυτόσαυροι in Greek, meaning 'plant lizard') are an extinct group of large, mostly semiaquatic Late Triassic archosauriform or basal archosaurian reptiles. Phytosaurs belong to the order Phytosauria and are sometimes ref ...

s more derived than ''

Diandongosuchus ''Diandongosuchus'' is an extinct genus of archosauriform reptile, possibly a member of the Phytosauria, known from the Middle Triassic of China. The type species ''Diandongosuchus fuyuanensis'' was named in 2012 from the Zhuganpo Formation of Y ...

'', a basal phytosaur. This family was phylogenetically defined by Christian Kammerer and colleagues in 2015 as the last common ancestor and all descendants of ''

Wannia scurriensis ''Wannia'' is an extinct genus of basal phytosaur reptile known from the Late Triassic (late Carnian or early Norian stage) of Texas, southern United States. It contains a single species, ''Wannia scurriensis'', which is known from a single spec ...

'', ''

Parasuchus hislopi ''Parasuchus'' is an extinct genus of basal phytosaur known from the Late Triassic (late Carnian to early Norian stage) of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, India. At its most restricted definition, ''Parasuchus'' contains a single species, ''P ...

'', and '' Mystriosuchus planirostris''. It encompasses nearly all phytosaurs, including early ''

Parasuchus ''Parasuchus'' is an extinct genus of basal phytosaur known from the Late Triassic (late Carnian to early Norian stage) of Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, India. At its most restricted definition, ''Parasuchus'' contains a single species, '' ...

''-

grade Grade most commonly refers to: * Grading in education, a measurement of a student's performance by educational assessment (e.g. A, pass, etc.) * A designation for students, classes and curricula indicating the number of the year a student has reach ...

forms as well as a more restricted clade of more specialized phytosaurs. This more restricted clade is traditionally known as the family Phytosauridae and more recently as the subfamily Mystriosuchinae, defined by Kammerer ''et al.'' 2015 as the last common ancestor and all descendants of '' Mystriosuchus planirostris'' and ''

Angistorhinus grandis ''Angistorhinus'' (meaning "narrow snout" or "hook snout") is an extinct genus of phytosaur known from the Late Triassic period (geology), period of Texas and Wyoming, United States. It was first named by Mehl in 1913 in paleontology, 1913 and t ...

''. Parasuchids have been recovered from Late Triassic deposits in

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

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Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...

and

Madagascar Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's List of islands by area, f ...

. In their osteology of ''

'', Kammerer et al. (2016) suggested using Parasuchidae to include taxa traditionally included in Phytosauridae as well as ''Parasuchus''-grade taxa. Stocker et al. (2017) use the phytosaur classification advocated by Kammerer et al. (2016) by recovering ''

'' as the basalmost phytosaur outside Parasuchidae, noting that ''Diandongosuchus'' has a shorter snout than parasuchids.Michelle R. Stocker; Li-Jun Zhao; Sterling J. Nesbitt; Xiao-Chun Wu; Chun Li (2017). "A Short-Snouted, Middle Triassic Phytosaur and its Implications for the Morphological Evolution and Biogeography of Phytosauria". Scientific Reports. 7: Article number 46028. doi:10.1038/srep46028.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q28598693 Phytosauria Prehistoric reptile families Late Triassic reptiles Carnian first appearances Rhaetian extinctions Taxa named by Richard Lydekker