Protorothyrididae Explained

Protorothyrididae is an extinct family of small, lizard-like reptiles belonging to Eureptilia. Their skulls did not have fenestrae, like the more derived diapsids. Protorothyridids lived from the Late Carboniferous to Early Permian periods, in what is now North America.^{[1] [2] [3] [4]} Many genera of primitive reptiles were thought to be protorothyridids. Brouffia, Coelostegus, Paleothyris and Hylonomus, for example, were found to be more basal eureptiles in Muller and Reisz (2006), making the family as historically defined paraphyletic, though three genera, Protorothyris, Anthracodromeus, and Cephalerpeton, were recovered as a monophyletic group.^[5] Anthracodromeus, Paleothyris, and Protorothyris were recovered as a monophyletic group in Ford and Benson (2020) (who did not sample Cephalerpeton), who recovered them as more derived than captorhinids and Hylonomus, but less so than araeoscelidians.^[6] Anthracodromeus is the earliest known reptile to display adaptations to climbing.^[7] The majority of phylogenetic studies recover protorothyridids as basal members of Eureptilia; however, Simões et al. (2022) recover them as stem-amniotes instead.^[8]

Notes and References

1. Llewellyn Ivor Price . 1937 . Two new cotylosaurs from the Permian of Texas . Proceedings of the New England Zoölogical Club . 11 . 97–102 .
2. Alfred Sherwood Romer . 1952 . Late Pennsylvanian and Early Permian Vertebrates of the Pittsburgh-West Virginia Region . Annals of Carnegie Museum . 33 . 47–113 . 10.5962/p.215221 . 251507617 . free .
3. R. L. Moodie . 1912 . The Pennsylvanic Amphibia of the Mazon Creek, Illinois, Shales . Kansas University Science Bulletin . 6 . 2 . 232–259 .
4. Robert L. Carroll . Donald Baird . 1972 . Carboniferous Stem-Reptiles of the Family Romeriidae . Bulletin of the Museum of Comparative Zoology . 143 . 5 . 321–363 .
5. Müller . J. . Reisz, R. R. . 2006 . The phylogeny of early eureptiles: comparing parsimony and Bayesian approaches in the investigation of a basal fossil clade . Systematic Biology . 16861212 . 55 . 3 . 503–511 . 10.1080/10635150600755396. free .
6. Ford . David P. . Benson . Roger B. J. . January 2020 . The phylogeny of early amniotes and the affinities of Parareptilia and Varanopidae . Nature Ecology & Evolution . en . 4 . 1 . 57–65 . 10.1038/s41559-019-1047-3 . 31900445 . 209673326 . 2397-334X.
7. Mann . Arjan . Dudgeon . Thomas W. . Henrici . Amy C. . Berman . David S . Pierce . Stephanie E. . 2021 . Digit and Ungual Morphology Suggest Adaptations for Scansoriality in the Late Carboniferous Eureptile Anthracodromeus longipes . Frontiers in Earth Science . 9 . 440 . 10.3389/feart.2021.675337 . 2021FrEaS...9..440M . 2296-6463. free .
8. Simões . T. R. . Kammerer . C. F. . Caldwell . M. W. . Pierce . S. E. . Successive climate crises in the deep past drove the early evolution and radiation of reptiles . 2022 . Science Advances . 8 . 33 . eabq1898 . 10.1126/sciadv.abq1898 . 35984885 . 9390993 . free .