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.Meyer H. (1855). Briefliche Mitteilung an Prof. Bonn. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paleontologie 1855: 326–327.
Ardeosaurus was originally considered a distant relative of 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.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. 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 long, with a flattened head and large eyes. It was probably nocturnal, and had jaws specialised for feeding on insects and spiders.
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