Younginiformes


Younginiformes is a replacement name for the taxon Eosuchia, proposed by Alfred Romer in 1947.
The Eosuchia having become a wastebasket taxon for many probably distantly-related primitive diapsid reptiles ranging from the late Carboniferous to the Eocene, Romer proposed that this be replaced by Younginiformes, to include the Younginidae and a very few similar families, ranging from the Permian to the Triassic.
Younginiformes is probably not a clade. It appears to represent a grade of South African Permo-Triassic diapsids that are not more closely related to each other as a whole than they are to other reptiles. A cladistic analysis by Laurin and Pineiro recovers Parareptilia as not only part of Diapsida, but also sister to Younginiformes.