Stereospondylomorpha

Stereospondylomorphs
Temporal range: 301–120 Ma
Life restoration of Prionosuchus plummeri
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Order: †Temnospondyli
Clade: †Limnarchia
Clade: †Stereospondylomorpha
Yates and Warren, 2000
Clades

Stereospondylomorpha is a clade of temnospondyls. It includes the superfamily Archegosauroidea and the more diverse group Stereospondyli.[1][2] Stereospondylomorpha was first proposed by Yates and Warren (2000), who found Archegosauroidea and Stereospondyli to be sister taxa in their phylogenetic analysis. A similar clade is Archegosauriformes, named by Schoch and Milner (2000), which includes Stereospondyli and some Permian temnospondyls that are similar in appearance to stereospondyls, including the archegosauroids.[3] However, according to Schoch and Milner's phylogeny, Archegosauroidea is a paraphyletic group of taxa that are successively basal to Stereospondyli, rather than a monophyletic sister taxon.[4]

Chinlestegophis, a putative Triassic stereospondyl considered to be related to metoposauroids such as Rileymillerus, has been noted to share many features with caecilians, a living group of legless burrowing amphibians. If Chinlestegophis is indeed both an advanced stereospondyl and a relative of caecilians, this means that stereospondylomorphs (in the form of caecilians) survived to the present day.[5]

  1. ^ Yates, A.M.; Warren, A.A. (2000). "The phylogeny of the "higher temnospondyls" (Vertebrata, Choanata)". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 128: 77–121. doi:10.1111/j.1096-3642.2000.tb00650.x.
  2. ^ Schoch, R.R.; Fastnacht, M.; Fichter, J.; Keller, T. (2007). "Anatomy and relationship of the Triassic temnospondyl Sclerothorax" (PDF). Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. 52: 117–136.
  3. ^ Schoch, R. R.; Milner, A. R. (2000). "Stereospondyli". In P. Wellnhofer (ed.). Handbuch der Paläoherpetologie. Vol. 3B. Munich: Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil. p. 203.
  4. ^ Stayton, C. T.; Ruta, M. (2006). "Geometric Morphometrics of the Skull Roof of Stereospondyls (Amphibia: Temnospondyli)". Palaeontology. 49 (2): 307. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4983.2006.00523.x.
  5. ^ Pardo, Jason D.; Small, Bryan J.; Huttenlocker, Adam K. (2017-07-03). "Stem caecilian from the Triassic of Colorado sheds light on the origins of Lissamphibia". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114 (27): E5389–E5395. doi:10.1073/pnas.1706752114. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 5502650. PMID 28630337.