Talk:Protorosauria

	Paleontology portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Palaeontology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of palaeontology-related topics and create a standardized, informative, comprehensive and easy-to-use resource on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PalaeontologyWikipedia:WikiProject PalaeontologyTemplate:WikiProject PalaeontologyPalaeontology articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Amphibians and Reptiles Low‑importance

	Protorosauria is part of WikiProject Amphibians and Reptiles, an effort to make Wikipedia a standardized, informative, comprehensive and easy-to-use resource for amphibians and reptiles. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information.Amphibians and ReptilesWikipedia:WikiProject Amphibians and ReptilesTemplate:WikiProject Amphibians and Reptilesamphibian and reptile articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Protorosauria vs Prolacertiformes edit

Latest comment: 11 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

So what's the consensus on naming? Modesto & Sues (2004) use Protorosauria as a clade and a bunch of other studies seem to use Protorosauria and Prolacertiformes interchangeably for the group. Does Prolacertiformes depend on the inclusion of Prolacerta? If this is the case, would that mean Prolacertiformes includes only Prolacerta now? Smokeybjb (talk) 20:34, 14 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Both clades are usually used as "stem based clades" (although a definition hasn't been proposed yet, because the analyses aren't well sampled or supported) that include Prolacerta (for Prolacertiformes) or Protorosaurus (for Protorosauria) but not Archosauria. Modesto & Sues (2004) suggested to use Prolacertiformes as the node Prolacerta+Archosauriformes, but only when other analyses will confirm their results... I think we should split between the clades (only 3 analyses that I know of found traditional Prolacertiformes, and every time there is a basal split between Drepanosauridae+Tanystropheidae, and Prolacertidae.) The problem is that there is no name for stem-Drepanosauridae, stem-Tanystropheidae and Drepanosauridae+Tanystropheidae, and the relations of Prolacertidae and Protorosauridae are very unstable (for now). About other taxa: analyses always recover Cosesaurus, Langobardisaurus, Macrocnemus and Malerisaurus as stem-Tanystropheidae or tanystropheids. Jesairosaurus and Dinocephalosaurus (although Sennikov considered it to be a tanystropheid) are always recovered as stem-Tanystropheidae or in polytomy with Drepanosauridae+Tanystropheidae. Boreopricea, Kadimakara and Pamelaria are usually recovered as prolacertids or in polytomy with Prolacerta and other "protorosaurs". Czatkowiella, in two analyses, was found to be the sister taxon of Protorosaurus.. Rnnsh (talk) 08:56, 15 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Ahh, and about the "extended" Prolacertidae - only Sennikov still treat all stem-tanystropheids as prolacertids, because he thinks that tanystropheids evolve from Prolacertidae. Rnnsh (talk) 09:02, 15 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Thanks for clearing that up. I don't have access to a lot of these papers, and it seems like every new analysis produces something different! Smokeybjb (talk) 23:48, 15 May 2012 (UTC)Reply

Add topic