Lemurosaurus

Lemurosaurus is a genus of extinct biarmosuchian therapsids from the Late Permian of South Africa. The generic epithet Lemursaurus is a mix of Latin, lemures "ghosts, spirits", and Greek, sauros, "lizard". Lemurosaurus is easily identifiable by its prominent eye crests, and large eyes. The name Lemurosaurus pricei was coined by paleontologist Robert Broom in 1949, based on a single small crushed skull, measured at approximately 86 millimeters in length, found on the Dorsfontein farm in Graaff-Reinet. To date, only two skulls of the Lemurosaurus have been discovered, so body size is unknown. The second larger, more intact, skull was found in 1974 by a team from the National Museum, Bloemfontein.

== History of discovery == The holotype skull was poorly preserved and referred to as BP/1/816. Lemurosaurus pricei was coined by Robert Broom in 1949 who was convinced it was a Gorgonopsian. Since 1949 it was presumed that Lemurosaurus was most closely related to Ictidorhinus martinsi. Then in 1970 this classification expanded when Rusell Sigogneu classified more genera within Ictidorhinidae and place them within Gorgonopsia. In 1989 Sigogneau restructured Ictidorhinds into four family-level taxa. These four were Biarmosuchidae, Hipposauridae, Ictidorhinidae, and Burnetiidae. Many of these classifications required further research, and some were incorrect altogether.