YOUNGINA

extinct genus of primitive reptiles found as fossils in Late Permian deposits of South Africa (the Permian Period began 286 million years ago and lasted 41 million years). Youngina is representative of the eosuchians, a basic reptilian stock that gave rise to the later lizards and snakes and may have been ancestral to the reptiles that dominated the Mesozoic Era (between 245 million and 66.4 million years ago). Youngina had a slender body and limbs and a primitive and generalized skull. Youngina retained the pineal eye, a light-receptive organ that in effect was a third eye.