Talk:Protorosauria

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Protorosauria vs Prolacertiformes

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]