Mesosaurids
Mesosaurids were a group of small, extinct aquatic reptiles that lived during the Early Permian period. They are the only known group of reptiles that exclusively inhabited freshwater environments, with fossil evidence found in both South America and Africa. This distribution is significant as it was long before the supercontinent Pangaea began to break apart, suggesting that these reptiles were present when the continents were joined.
These animals were adapted for a marine or possibly brackish water lifestyle, possessing long, slender bodies
Mesosaurids are considered important in understanding continental drift. The discovery of their fossils on widely separated