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Euparkeria
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Euparkeria

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Euparkeria (; meaning "Parker's good animal", named in honor of W. K. Parker) is an extinct genus of archosauriform reptile from the Triassic of South Africa. Euparkeria is close to the ancestry of Archosauria, the reptile group that includes crocodilians, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs (including birds).

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Encyclopedic overview

10 sections
Contents
  • History and naming
  • Classification
  • Ancestor of archosaurs
  • Removal from Archosauria
  • Euparkeriids
  • Palaeobiology
  • Locomotion
  • Nocturnality
  • Palaeoecology
  • References

Euparkeria (; meaning "Parker's good animal", named in honor of W. K. Parker) is an extinct genus of archosauriform reptile from the Triassic of South Africa. Euparkeria is close to the ancestry of Archosauria, the reptile group that includes crocodilians, pterosaurs, and dinosaurs (including birds).

Fossils of Euparkeria, including nearly complete skeletons, have been recovered from the Cynognathus Assemblage Zone (CAZ, also known as the Burgersdorp Formation), which hosts the oldest advanced archosauriforms in the fossil-rich Karoo Basin. Tentative dating schemes place the CAZ around the latest Early Triassic (late Olenekian stage) or earliest Middle Triassic (early Anisian stage), approximately 247 million years old.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Euparkeria” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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