Euparkeriidae

Euparkeriidae Temporal range: Early Triassic to Middle Triassic, 245–230 Ma PreЄ Є O S D C P T J K Pg N
Fossil of Euparkeria capensis in the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Clade:	Eucrocopoda
Family:	†Euparkeriidae Huene, 1920
Subgroups
See text.

See text.

Euparkeriidae is a family of small basal archosauromorph carnivores which lived from the Early Triassic to the Middle Triassic (Anisian). While most other early archosauriforms walked on four limbs, euparkeriids were probably facultative bipeds that had the ability to walk on their hind limbs at times. The only definitive member of Euparkeriidae is the species Euparkeria capensis, which was named by paleontologist Robert Broom from the Karoo Basin of South Africa in 1913 and is known from several nearly complete skeletons. The family name was first proposed by German paleontologist Friedrich von Huene in 1920; Huene classified euparkeriids as members of Pseudosuchia, a traditional name for crocodilian relatives from the Triassic (Pseudosuchia means "false crocodiles"). Recent phylogenetic analyses place Euparkeriidae as a basal group of Archosauriformes, a position outside Pseudosuchia and close to the ancestry of both crocodile-line archosaurs and bird-line archosaurs (which include dinosaurs and pterosaurs). However, they are probably not direct ancestors of archosaurs.

Several other species have been assigned to the family, but several recent studies suggest that Euparkeriidae may not represent a true evolutionary grouping or clade. Instead, the family may represent an evolutionary grade of small archosauriforms (making it paraphyletic) or a group of species that each evolved small body sizes through evolutionary convergence (making it polyphyletic).