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Direct evidence of the rostral anatomy of the aïstopod Phlegethontia, with a new cranial reconstruction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2015

Jason S. Anderson*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, University of Calgary, 3330 Hospital Dr. NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 4N1,

Extract

In a series of recent papers, colleagues and I (Milner, 1994; Carroll, 1998; Anderson, 2002, 2003a, 2003b; Anderson et al., 2003) have revised Aïstopoda, a collection of elongate, limbless tetrapods from the Paleozoic of Euramerica. Aïstopods are part of a larger, monophyletic assemblage of tetrapods known as lepospondyls, which are proving to be critical to understanding the early evolution of amniotes and are possibly related to the origins of some, or all, modern amphibians (Carroll, 1995, 2000a, 2000b; Laurin and Reisz, 1997, 1999; Laurin, 1998; Anderson, 2001; Ruta et al., 2003; Vallin and Laurin, 2004).

Type
Paleontological Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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