Microposaurus

Microposaurus (meaning "small eyed lizard"; from Greek , "small" + , "face" or "eye" + , "lizard") is an extinct genus of trematosaurid temnospondyl. Fossils are known from the Cynognathus Assemblage Zone of the Beaufort Group (part of the Karoo Supergroup) in South Africa and the Rouse Hill Siltstone of Australia that date back to the Anisian stage of the Middle Triassic. These aquatic creatures were the short snouted lineage from Trematosaurinae.

==Discovery== During 1923, the first species of Microposaurus were found by Dr. E. C. Case on a venture into the redbed exposures of Wonderboom Bridge. These sites, just south of Burgersdrop Formation in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, were from the Cynognathus zone. When found, the skull was described as an "embedded palate upwards, in a fairly soft dark-green shaly mudstone" which is characteristic of the amphibious behavior of Microposaurus. Relating to the name of the discoverer, the given name was Microposaurus casei. Unfortunately, the skull had a ferruginous material coating that could not be removed without damaging the already crushed skull. Also, from the coating, the sutures typical of skulls were unable to be determined decisively. From these drawbacks, many features stated by Haughton in his first examination of the specimen were later determined to be incorrect. As a result, when Damiani wrote his paper on M. casei he noted many features that Haughton had named or described incorrectly.