Contributions to Zoology, 77 (3) - 2008

A reevaluation of the evidence supporting an unorthodox hypothesis on the origin of extant amphibians

David Marjanovic, Michel Laurin

UMR 7179, Equipe Squelette des Vertebres, CNRS/Universite Paris 6, 4 place Jussieu, case 19, 75005 Paris, France, david.marjanovic@gmx.at

Keywords: Albanerpetontidae, Brachydectes, coding, continuous characters, data matrix, Gerobatrachus, Gymnophioniformes, Gymnophionomorpha, Lissamphibia, Lysorophia, morphology, ontogeny, paleontology, phylogeny, scoring, stepmatrix gap-weighting.


Abstract
Introduction
Nomenclatural remarks
Phylogenetic nomenclature
Rank-based nomenclature
Abbreviations
Methods
Addition of Brachydectes and homology of its dermal skull bones
Ontogeny and phylogenetic position of Doleserpeton
Ontogeny and phylogenetic position of Brachydectes
Addition of Gerobatrachus and its ontogeny and phylogenetic position
Phylogenetic analysis
Rooting the tree
Interpretation of the OTUs
Revision of the matrix
Results
Discussion
Implications of the size of the matrix
Implications of the quality of the matrix
Analyses without Gerobatrachus
Interpretation of Gerobatrachus and effects of its addition to our analyses
‘Microsaur’ phylogeny
The phylogenetic position of Albanerpetontidae
Acknowledgments
References
Appendix 1
Appendix
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4