Barasaurus

Barasaurus is an extinct genus of owenettid procolophonoid parareptile known from the late Late Permian and early Early Triassic of Madagascar. It contains a single species, Barasaurus besairiei.

Barasaurus besairiei, the type species of the Barasaurus, was first described and named by the French paleontologist Jean Piveteau in 1955 on the basis of the holotype MNHN P1, a natural mold of a nearly complete skeleton, missing only the tail and distal limb reposited in the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris. The holotype was collected from the Lower Sakamena Formation of the Sakamena Group at the Ranohira locality of Morondava Basin, Fianarantsoa, dating to the Lopingian stage of the late Late Permian period. The generic name honors the Bara people, indigenous to the Ranohira region of Madagascar, and is derived from sauros, meaning "lizard" in Ancient Greek. The specific name, besairiei, honors Henri Michel-Edouard Besairie, a French geologist who supervised the Geological Survey of Madagascar and collected the holotype specimen.