[2] However, a study by Gow (1975) instead found that it shared more similarities with the lineage that would lead to archosaurs such as crocodilians and dinosaurs (including birds).

Many modern paleontologists consider Prolacerta to be among the closest relatives of the Archosauriformes, an advanced group of archosauromorphs including true archosaurs.

[4][1] Prolacerta was first described by Francis Rex Parrington in 1935 from a single skull discovered near the small town of Middelburg in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

[7] The generic name Prolacerta is derived from Latin, meaning “before lizard”, and its species name broomi is in commemoration of the famous paleontologist Robert Broom, who discovered and studied many of the fossils found in rocks of the Karoo Supergroup.

[6] Gow (1975) provided the most complete description of the fossil material collected and stored at BPI up to that point, establishing Prolacerta's affinities with archosaurs rather than lizards.

The original Antarctic fossils were collected from 1969 to 1971 by James Kitching and his colleagues, working in the Fremouw Formation near the junction of the McGregor and Shackleton glaciers.

[13] The Antarctic Prolacerta fossils were amended by Stephan Spiekman (2018), with the description of a new articulated skeleton stored at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture (UWBM).

[13] Some of the differences between the AMNH and South African fossils are ambiguous due to quirks of preservation and limited overlap between specimens.

Prolacerta is arguably the most well-represented stem-archosauriform, with numerous well preserved specimens housed in various research institutions in South Africa, Europe, and in the United States.

Prolacerta was probably a small, active, terrestrial carnivore or insectivore due to its fang-like teeth of roughly the same size and shape.

[3] However, later studies starting with Dilkes (1998) have split apart the concept of Prolacertiformes, with "protorosaurs" being placed near the base of Archosauromorpha, and Prolacerta being much closer to Archosauriformes.