Monophyly and affinities of albanerpetontid amphibians (Temnospondyli; Lissamphibia)

Comparative 3D analyses and palaeoecology of giant early amphibians (Temnospondyli: Stereospondyli)

Macroevolutionary, palaeoecological and biomechanical analyses in deep time offer the possibility to decipher the structural constraints, ecomorphological patterns and evolutionary history of extinct groups. Here, 3D comparative biomechanical analyses of the extinct giant early amphibian group of stereospondyls together with living lissamphibians and crocodiles, shows that: i) stereospondyls ha...

The first record of albanerpetontid amphibians (Amphibia: Albanerpetontidae) from East Asia

Albanerpetontids are an enigmatic fossil amphibian group known from deposits of Middle Jurassic to Pliocene age. The oldest and youngest records are from Europe, but the group appeared in North America in the late Early Cretaceous and radiated there during the Late Cretaceous. Until now, the Asian record has been limited to fragmentary specimens from the Late Cretaceous of Uzbekistan. This led ...

Temnospondyl ontogeny and phylogeny, a window into terrestrial ecosystems during the Permian-Triassic mass extinction

Temnospondyls are the most species-rich group of early amphibians, but specieslevel phylogenetic analyses of this large clade have so far only incompletely sampled the group. This study represents the largest and most comprehensive species-level phylogenetic study of Temnospondyli, sampling 99 taxa for 297 morphological characters from all seven continents through nearly 170 million years of th...

Morphogenera, monophyly, and macroevolution.

Jablonski and Finarelli (1) suggest that morphogenera, even when they are nonmonophyletic, serve as good representatives for large-scale evolutionary studies. We feel there are two issues that warrant further discussion. First, the test used to evaluate the effect of using nonmonophyletic groups for macroevolutionary studies was not conservative and thus does not provide strong evidence about t...

Angiosperm monophyly.