| Ardeosaurus Temporal range: Tithonian PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓ | |
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| Fossil specimen | |
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Order: | Squamata |
| Family: | †Ardeosauridae |
| Genus: | †Ardeosaurus Meyer, 1860 |
| Type species | |
| †Homeosaurus brevipes Meyer, 1855 | |
| Species | |
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Ardeosaurus is an extinct genus of basal lizards, known from fossils found in the Late Jurassic Solnhofen Plattenkalk of Bavaria, southern Germany. It was originally thought to have been a species of Homeosaurus.
Ardeosaurus was originally considered to be a distant relative to modern geckos, and had a similar physical appearance. Evans and colleagues, however, showed it in 2005 to be a basal squamate outside the crown group of all living lizards and snakes. A subsequent study conducted by Simões and colleagues in 2017 corroborated its initial proposed phylogenetic placement, indicating that Ardeosaurus was a stem-gekkotan. It was around 20 centimetres (7.9 in) long, with a flattened head and large eyes. It was probably nocturnal, and had jaws specialised for feeding on insects and spiders.
References
- Meyer H. (1855). Briefliche Mitteilung an Prof. Bonn. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paleontologie 1855: 326–327.
- Evans, S. E., Wang, Y., & Li, C. (2005). The early Cretaceous lizard genus Yabeinosaurus from China: resolving an enigma. Journal of Systematic Palaeontology, 3, 319-335.
- Simões, T.R.; Caldwell, M.W.; Nydam, R.L.; Jiménez-Huidobro, P. (2017). "Osteology, phylogeny, and functional morphology of two Jurassic lizard species and the early evolution of scansoriality in geckoes". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 180 (1): 216–241. doi:10.1111/zoj.12487.
- Palmer, D., ed. (1999). The Marshall Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals. London: Marshall Editions. p. 86. ISBN 978-1-84028-152-1.
| Taxon identifiers | |
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| Ardeosaurus | |
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