Clevosaurus ("Gloucester lizard") is an extinct genus of sphenodontia

Sphenodontia

Sphenodontia is an order of lizard-like reptiles that includes only one living genus, the tuatara , and only two living species...

n reptile from the Triassic

Triassic

The Triassic is a geologic period and system that extends from about 250 to 200 Mya . As the first period of the Mesozoic Era, the Triassic follows the Permian and is followed by the Jurassic. Both the start and end of the Triassic are marked by major extinction events...

 and the Jurassic

Jurassic

The Jurassic is a geologic period and system that extends from about Mya to  Mya, that is, from the end of the Triassic to the beginning of the Cretaceous. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of the Mesozoic era, also known as the age of reptiles. The start of the period is marked by...

 periods of Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...

, Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

, (C. bairdi) and Yunnan

Yunnan

Yunnan is a province of the People's Republic of China, located in the far southwest of the country spanning approximately and with a population of 45.7 million . The capital of the province is Kunming. The province borders Burma, Laos, and Vietnam.Yunnan is situated in a mountainous area, with...

 (C. mcgilli). Clevosaurus was extremely similar to the modern tuatara

Tuatara

The tuatara is a reptile endemic to New Zealand which, though it resembles most lizards, is actually part of a distinct lineage, order Sphenodontia. The two species of tuatara are the only surviving members of its order, which flourished around 200 million years ago. Their most recent common...

 in almost every way; the two genera differ in only certain features of the teeth and skull anatomies, as well as size. Clevosaurus was smaller than the modern Tuatara. Clevosaurus possibly ate plants as well as insects, as suggested by the form of the teeth. Fossils of Clevosaurus, as well as other sphenodontians, early mammals and dinosaurs have been found in ancient cave systems of Great Britain. Clevosaurus is now believed to have had Pangaea

Pangaea

Pangaea, Pangæa, or Pangea is hypothesized as a supercontinent that existed during the Paleozoic and Mesozoic eras about 250 million years ago, before the component continents were separated into their current configuration....

n distribution.

A new find

Some fossils from South America (into Geopark

Geopark

A Geopark is defined by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in its UNESCO Geoparks International Network of Geoparks programme as follows:...

 of Paleorrota

Paleorrota

Paleorrota , is a geopark located in the center of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. The rocks and fossils found along the route date back to the times when there was only one supercontinent Pangaea....

) found in 2006 represent a new species of Clevosaurus (C. brasiliensis).

Species

A questionable cladogram

Cladogram

A cladogram is a diagram used in cladistics which shows ancestral relations between organisms, to represent the evolutionary tree of life. Although traditionally such cladograms were generated largely on the basis of morphological characters, DNA and RNA sequencing data and computational...

 of the genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

Clevosaurus.