Euparkeria
| Euparkeria | ||||||||||||
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Cast of the holotype of Euparkeria capensis with bones painted red in the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle in Paris. |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| lower middle Triassic ( anisium ) | ||||||||||||
| 246 to 238 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Euparkeria | ||||||||||||
| Broom , 1913 |
Euparkeria was a small diapsid reptile , only a little more than half a meter long, that lived in the Lower and Middle Triassic . The type species Euparkeria capensis , the only species found so far, is only known from a single site in the Karoo basin of South Africa .
Euparkeria had a stocky body with 22 vertebrae and a long tail. The legs were slim, the hind legs 1.5 times as long as the front legs. A series of bone plates run over the back and tail along the spine. The teeth are laterally flattened and form small blades with serrated edges.
In reconstructions, Euparkeria is usually shown biped , but the foot, the hind bones and the joint surfaces are not specialized for two-legged, upright locomotion. Euparkeria , like today's basilisks , was probably able to flee quickly by running on its hind legs in case of danger.
Together with a few other, far less well-researched genera from the Central Triassic of Russia and China, Euparkeria forms the family Euparkeridae .
literature
- Robert L. Carroll : Paleontology and Evolution of the Vertebrates. Thieme, Stuttgart et al. 1993, ISBN 3-13-774401-6 .
- Rosalie F. Ewer: The Anatomy of the Thecodont Reptile Euparkeria capensis Broom. In: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences. Vol. 248, No. 751, 1965, pp. 379-435, doi : 10.1098 / rstb.1965.0003 .
Web links
- Palæos Euparkeriidae