Euparkeriidae is a family of small
basal archosauromorph carnivores which lived from the Early
Triassic to the Middle Triassic (
Anisian). While most other early archosauriforms walked on four limbs, euparkeriids were probably facultative
bipeds that had the ability to walk on their hind limbs at times. The only definitive member of Euparkeriidae is the species
Euparkeria capensis, which was named by paleontologist
Robert Broom from the
Karoo Basin of South Africa in 1913 and is known from several nearly complete skeletons. The family name was first proposed by German paleontologist
Friedrich von Huene in 1920; Huene classified euparkeriids as members of
Pseudosuchia, a traditional name for crocodilian relatives from the Triassic (Pseudosuchia means "false crocodiles"). Recent
phylogenetic analyses place Euparkeriidae as a
basal group of
Archosauriformes, a position outside Pseudosuchia and close to the ancestry of both crocodile-line archosaurs and bird-line archosaurs (which include dinosaurs and pterosaurs). However, they are probably not direct ancestors of archosaurs.