Diplovertebron

Diplovertebron (from , 'double' and , 'vertebra') is an extinct genus of embolomere that lived in the Late Carboniferous period (Moscovian), about 310 million years ago. Diplovertebron was a medium-sized animal, around 50 cm in length. Members of the genus inhabited European Carboniferous swamps in what is now the Czech Republic. They were closely related to larger swamp-dwelling tetrapods like Proterogyrinus and Anthracosaurus. However, Diplovertebron were much smaller than these large, crocodile-like creatures. Known from a single species, Diplovertebron punctatum, this genus has had a complicated history closely tied to Gephyrostegus, another genus of small, reptile-like amphibians.

== History == left|thumb|245x245px|Plate 53, Frič's illustration containing fossils from the larger slab Diplovertebron was one of many tetrapods found in Czech coal swamps by Antonin Frič in the late 19th century. Its remains were an assortment of disarticulated fossils encased in two slabs of coal, which were designated Fr. Orig. 96 (for the smaller slab) and Fr. Orig. 128 (for the larger slab). D.M.S. Watson (1926) assigned two more complete specimens to the genus. One of these had already been named as the type specimen of the reptile-like tetrapod Gephyrostegus by Otto Jaekel in 1902, while the second specimen, DMSW B.65, was newly described. A later study, Brough & Brough (1967), restored the validity of Gephyrostegus and rebuked Watson's decision to add Jaekel's and his specimens to Diplovertebron. Richard Lydekker renamed Diplovertebron to Diplospondylus in 1889, based on the fact that the etymology of "Diplospondylus" was all Greek, while that of "Diplovertebron" was a hybrid of Greek and Latin. However, few other paleontologists shared Lydekker's aversion to hybrid names.