Ankylopoda
Sign in to saveAnkylopoda was a proposed clade that hypothetically contains turtles and lepidosaurs (tuatara, lizards and snakes) and their fossil relatives. This clade was historically supported based on microRNA analysis as well as some morphological cladistic analyses. However, it was strongly contradicted by molecular evidence which supports Archelosauria (the grouping of turtles and archosaurs), as well as some morphological analyses.
~1 min read
Encyclopedic overview
3 sectionsContents
- Classification
- See also
- References
Ankylopoda was a proposed clade that hypothetically contains turtles and lepidosaurs (tuatara, lizards and snakes) and their fossil relatives. This clade was historically supported based on microRNA analysis as well as some morphological cladistic analyses. However, it was strongly contradicted by molecular evidence which supports Archelosauria (the grouping of turtles and archosaurs), as well as some morphological analyses.
== Classification == The cladogram below follows the most likely result found by another analysis of turtle relationships, this one using only fossil evidence, published by Rainer Schoch and Hans-Dieter Sues in 2015. This study found Eunotosaurus to be an actual early stem-turtle, though other versions of the analysis found weak support for it as a parareptile.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Ankylopoda” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.