Yarasuchus (meaning "red crocodile") is an extinct genus of avemetatarsalian archosaur that lived during the Anisian stage of the Middle Triassic of India.

Yarasuchus has had a complicated taxonomic history, after originally being described as a "prestosuchid rauisuchian", it was later variously recovered as a poposauroid pseudosuchian and a non-archosaurian archosauriform of unstable position.

Together, they belong to a group called Aphanosauria and are placed at the base of Avemetatarsalia, sister to Ornithodira, making Yarasuchus one of the earliest diverging bird-line archosaurs known.

Nesbitt and colleagues also regarded the jugal, quadrate and quadratojugal as indeterminate bones, and re-identified the squamosal as a postorbital belonging to a larger individual than the holotype specimen.

The articulating surfaces of the zygapophyses that connect between each vertebra are inclined and the centra are strongly curved along the bottom margin with offset faces, indicating that the neck was held raised up from the body and arched along its length.

The scapula has a continuous acromion process, as well as an unusual sharp, thin ridge of bone running down its posterior margin, a feature only found in aphanosaurs and silesaurids.

The nature of the articulation between the ilium and the sacral ribs suggests the hip was held sub-horizontally and faced ventrolaterally, causing the legs to be positioned down and outwards from the body.

The humerus is long and cylindrical, with a moderately developed elongated deltopectoral crest that occupies roughly 30% of the length of the bone, similar to the condition in dinosaurs.

[3] Yarasuchus is known from at least two individuals collected from a single 1 square metre (11 sq ft) assemblage in the Yerrapalli Formation, located near the Bhimaram village in the Adilabad district of India, in a layer of fine red mudstone.

The material was found disarticulated, however it represents the majority of the skeleton, missing only the distal caudal vertebrae, radius, fibula, manus, and most of the pes and skull.

In their examination, Nesbitt and colleagues were able to refer a number of previously undescribed calcanea collected at the site to the hypodigm of Yarasuchus based on their similarity to Teleocrater, and identified ischia that were originally reported as missing.

[2] In 2010, Brusatte and colleagues conclusively demonstrated that "Prestosuchidae" was a paraphyletic grade of paracrocodylomorphs, and that the supposed shared characteristics of the group were in fact found throughout Pseudosuchia.

They also performed a detailed cladistic analysis of fossil Triassic archosaurs, which instead found Yarasuchus to be a basal member of Poposauroidea, although support for this position was weak.

Many of the previously unique features of Yarasuchus unite it with other aphanosaurs, including the elongated neck, high neural spines, three-headed cervical ribs and slender appendicular skeleton.

[3] The anatomy of Yarasuchus also demonstrates that other typical avemetatarsalian features, such as slender limb girdles, had evolved prior to the eponymous 'advanced mesotarsal' ankles.

[6] Yarasuchus was proposed to be facultatively bipedal by Dasgupta in 1993 on the basis of its gracile body, slender shoulder girdle and proportionately short forelimbs, among other features, and this suggestion was repeated by Sen in its official description in 2005.

[3] The lack of definitive jaw material leaves the diet of Yarasuchus ambiguous, however the teeth of Teleocrater imply aphanosaurs were carnivorous, as with other early avemetatarsalians.

[7] Other vertebrate remains include those of the lungfish Ceratodus, the actinopterygian fish Saurichthys, the temnospondyl Parotosuchus, the dicynodonts Rechnisaurus and Wadiasaurus, the rhynchosaur Mesodapedon, and a large undescribed erythrosuchid.

This demonstrates that early avemetatarsalians like Yarasuchus were geographically widespread in the Middle Triassic, as with other archosauriforms, in contrast to previous suggestions that pseudosuchians were more diverse.

[3][6][15] The sediments of the Yerrapalli Formation are interpreted as fluvial deposits, indicative of a broad, interchannel floodplain environment with seasonal ephemeral stream channels.

This is consistent with the preservation state of the fossils, as the remains of Yarasuchus were found dismembered and disarticulated, suggesting the material was left exposed at the surface for a period before being buried by suspended fluvial sediments.