Bavarisaurus ('Bavarian lizard') is an extinct genus of basal squamate found in the Altmühltal Formation near Bavaria, Germany.Bavarisaurus at Fossilworks.org It is the only genus in the family Bavarisauridae.
Discovery and naming The holotype is BSPHM 1873 III,Hoffstetter, R. (1953). Les sauriens anté-cretacées. - Bull. Mus. nat. Hist. natur., 25:345-352, 1 Abb. and part of the holotype is now lost. It was initially identified as a species of Homoeosaurus as H. macrodactylus by Wagner (1852).Wagner, J. A. (1852). Neu-aufgefundene Saurier-Überreste aus den lithographischen Schiefern und dem obern Jurakalke. München: Verl. d. Akad. S. - 710, Bl. XVII - XX A second partial specimen was tentatively assigned to B. macrospondylus by Ostrom (1978),Ostrom J. (1978). The osteology of Compsognathus longipes Wagner. Zitteliana 4: 78–118. and Evans (1994) also identified fragmentary skull material belonging to Bavarisaurus.
A fossil skeleton found in the stomach region of a Compsognathus, a small theropod dinosaur, was originally assigned to the genus by Ostrom (1978), but was renamed to Schoenesmahl by Conrad (2018).
Classification It is the only genus in the Bavarisauridae family.
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