Prolacertidae is an extinct family of archosauromorph reptiles that lived during the

Early Triassic The Early Triassic is the first of three epochs of the Triassic Period of the geologic timescale. It spans the time between 251.9 Ma and Ma (million years ago). Rocks from this epoch are collectively known as the Lower Triassic Series, which ...

epoch. It was named in 1935 by the British palaeontologist Francis Rex Parrington to include the species '' Prolacerta broomi'' of

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

and

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

. In 1979 a second species, '' Kadimakara australiensis'', was described from

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

. Several other genera, such as '' Macrocnemus'', '' Pamelaria'' and '' Prolacertoides'', have also been assigned to this family in the past, but these have been placed elsewhere by later studies, leaving ''Prolacerta'' and ''Kadimakara'' as the only well-supported members. The prolacertids were historically placed within the

paraphyletic Paraphyly is a taxonomic term describing a grouping that consists of the grouping's last common ancestor and some but not all of its descendant lineages. The grouping is said to be paraphyletic ''with respect to'' the excluded subgroups. In co ...

group Prolacertiformes along with other basal, long-necked archosauriforms like ''

Protorosaurus ''Protorosaurus'' (from , 'earlier' and , 'lizard') is an extinct genus of reptile. Members of the genus lived during the late Permian period in what is now Germany and Great Britain. Once believed to have been an ancestor to lizards, ''Protoro ...

'' and the tanystropheids. However, more recent research has shown that the prolacertids were only distantly related to other "prolacertiforms", and were instead among the closest relatives of

Archosauriformes Archosauriformes (Ancient Greek, Greek for 'ruling lizards', and Latin for 'form') is a clade of diapsid reptiles encompassing Archosaur, archosaurs and some of their close relatives. It was defined by Jacques Gauthier (1994) as the clade stemmin ...

. The

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

below follows a phylogenetic analysis by Ezcurra (2016):

References

Archosauromorpha Prehistoric reptile families Early Triassic reptiles Taxa named by Francis Rex Parrington {{Triassic-reptile-stub