Carusia

Carusia Temporal range: Late Cretaceous (late Campanian)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Order:	Squamata
Clade:	Carusioidea
Genus:	†Carusia Borsuk-Bialynicka, 1985
Type species
†Carusia intermedia Borsuk-Bialynicka, 1985

Carusia is an extinct genus of lizards from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia. It is a close relative of the family Xenosauridae, which includes living knob-scaled lizards. Fossils of the type and only species Carusia intermedia come from the late-Campanian age Barun Goyot Formation and have been found in the Flaming Cliffs, , and fossil localities. Carusia was first described in 1985 under the name Carolina intermedia, but since the name Carolina was preoccupied by a genus of scarab beetles that had been named in 1880, it was renamed Carusia intermedia.^[1] Carusia had initially been known from fragmentary skull material, complicating efforts to determine its evolutionary relationships with other lizards; it had variously been described as an indeterminate scincomorph, a xenosaurid, or some other type of autarchoglossan lizard convergent with xenosaurids. However, the discovery of 35 complete skulls in the 1990s, three of which were described in a detailed 1998 monograph, revealed that Carusia was the sister taxon (closest relative) of Xenosauridae, compelling the authors of the monograph to create a new clade called Carusioidea to include both taxa.^[2]

Like xenosaurids, Carusia has a skull roof covered in large rounded osteoderms (bony plates embedded in the skin). It also shares with xenosaurids closely spaced orbits (eye sockets) with fused frontal bones between them, and a connection between the jugal and squamosal bones. However, many other features of its skull set it apart from xenosaurids, including the lack of a lacrimal bone, the wideness of the palatine bone, and the small size and high number of teeth in its jaws.^[2]

References[]

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