Lemurosaurus is a genus of extinct biarmosuchian therapsids from the Late Permian of South Africa.

[1] The generic epithet Lemursaurus is a mix of Latin, lemures “ghosts, spirits”, and Greek, sauros, “lizard”.

The name Lemurosaurus pricei was coined by paleontologist Robert Broom in 1949, based on a single small crushed skull, measured at approximately 86 millimeters in length, found on the Dorsfontein farm in Graaff-Reinet.

[2] Then in 1970 this classification expanded when Rusell Sigogneu classified more genera within Ictidorhinidae and place them within Gorgonopsia.

[1] In 1974, a second skull known as NMQR 1702 was extracted on the farm Petersburg in South Africa, 50 kilometers southeast of the type locality.

[1] The left posterolateral corner of the skull is warped, resulting in missing features like a portion of the zygomatic arch, the occipital condyle, and the paraoccipital process of the opisthotic.

The lower canine rests in the anterior section of the choana, much like gorgonopsians, therocephalians, and burnetiamorphs.

[1] There are also high ridges on the dorsal margins of the orbit, and a small midline crest anterior to the pineal foreman.

[1] Measurement of scleral ring in orbital dimensions indicate Lemurosaurus were able to see in low light conditions.

The Lobalopex fossil was recovered on a farm, Quaggas Fontein 250 in South Africa and is thought to be Middle or Late Permian in age.

For example, on the Lobalopex skull the median frontal ridge is not prominent, and the posterior contact with the nasal passage is almost flat.

[5] Another difference is that Lobalopex has a dorsal orbital margin that has not become thicker with extra layers of bone, where Lemurosaurus is pachyostosed.

[5] A partial skull was found in the Western Cape of South Africa in 1985 that lead to the discovery of a new burnetiamorph called Lophorhinus, the fossil was misclassified until 2001.

[6] The discovery of this fossil is important because it shows that there were two related taxa (Lophorhinus and Lobalopex) alive during the same assemblage zone.

[7] Lemurosaurus’ characteristics place it closer to burnetiids than to its biarmosuchian genera, reclassifying them to burnetiamorpha, altering the previous belief that they were in Ictidorhinidae.

[9] Within this basin lies different zones that made it difficult to pinpoint exactly where Lemurosaurus was positioned in the timeline.