''Sphodrosaurus'' is an extinct

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

basal Basal or basilar is a term meaning ''base'', ''bottom'', or ''minimum''. Science * Basal (anatomy), an anatomical term of location for features associated with the base of an organism or structure * Basal (medicine), a minimal level that is nec ...

archosauriform Archosauriformes (Greek for 'ruling lizards', and Latin for 'form') is a clade of diapsid reptiles that developed from archosauromorph ancestors some time in the Latest Permian (roughly 252 million years ago). It was defined by Jacques Gauthie ...

n reptiles from the

Late Triassic The Late Triassic is the third and final epoch (geology), epoch of the Triassic geologic time scale, Period in the geologic time scale, spanning the time between annum, Ma and Ma (million years ago). It is preceded by the Middle Triassic Epoch ...

-aged New Oxford Formation (not the

Brunswick Formation The Passaic Formation is a mapped bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York. It was previously known as the Brunswick Formation since it was first described in the vicinity of New Brunswick, New Jersey. It is now named for the city of ...

as initially suggested) of

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; (Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, Ma ...

. The type species is ''S. pennsylvanicus'', described by

Edwin Colbert Edwin Harris "Ned" Colbert (September 28, 1905 – November 15, 2001)O'Connor, Anahad '' The New York Times'', November 25, 2001. was a distinguished American vertebrate paleontologist and prolific researcher and author. Born in Clarinda, Iowa ...

in 1960. Colbert, E. H. (1960). A New Triassic Procolophonid from Pennsylvania. ''American Museum Novitates'' 2022:1-19 The holotype ( NMN Franklin and Marshall College] 2321; the cast is listed under AMNH 7601) consists of a partial skeleton including the back of the skull, the vertebral column, all of the ribs, all of the hindlimbs and part of the upper forelimbs; ''Sphodrosaurus'' was originally believed to have been a member of the

Procolophonidae 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, A ...

while more recently ''Sphodrosaurus'' was believed to be a basal member of the Diapsida by most authors starting with Sues ''et al.'' (1993), or a member of the Rhynchosauria (Baird, 1986). In 2022, Ezcurra & Sues redescribed the holotype in detail and placed it in a phylogenetic analysis with other Triassic diapsid reptiles, where it was found as the basalmost doswellid.

References

Prehistoric reptile genera Late Triassic extinctions Taxa named by Edwin H. Colbert Fossil taxa described in 1960 {{paleo-reptile-stub