Saurian
| Saurians Temporal range: Guadalupian–Present, 265.8–0 Ma |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Neodiapsida |
| Clade: |
Sauria Macartney, 1802 |
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The clade Sauria was traditionally a suborder for lizards which originally (before 1800) comprised crocodilians too. It has been redefined as the group containing the most recent common ancestor of archosaurs and lepidosaurs and all its descendants; as such it was commonly thought that Sauria is a crowned-base grouping of diapsids. However, recent genomic studies and comprehensive studies in the fossil record suggest that turtles are closely related to archosaurs, not to parareptiles as previously thought. As such Sauria can be seen as a crowned-group of all modern reptiles (including birds) within the larger total group Sauropsida, which also contains various stem-reptile groups.
The synapomorphies or characters that unite the clade Sauria also help them be distinguished from stem-saurians in Diapsida or stem-reptiles in clade Sauropsida in the following categories based on the following regions of the body.
However, some of these characters might be lost or modified in several lineages, particularly among birds and turtles; it is best to see these characters as the ancestral features that were present in the ancestral saurian.
The cladogram shown below follows the most likely result found by an analysis of turtle relationships using both fossil and genetic evidence by M.S. Lee, in 2013. This study found Eunotosaurus, usually regarded as a turtle relative, to be only very distantly related to turtles in the clade Parareptilia.
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