TOITLES (NYUCK NYUCK NYUCK NYUCK)

["Matthew Troutman" <m_troutman@hotmail.com>]

> T.A.,
>     I think it was Rieppl who published something recently in Fieldiana 
> (Geology) that relates to this.  I haven't see this paper, but apparently 
> he believes turtles are related to sauropterygian diapsids, and that turtle 
> skulls may have evolved back to the anapsid condition secondarily (which 
> would mean the taxon Anapsida is polyphyletic).
>     Very interesting indeed!
>                            ------Ken Kinman


Contrary to the Hedges and Poling study where turtles are  archosaurian 
archosauromorphs, M. deBraga and Rieppel (1997) in ZJLS find that turtles 
(Testudines) are lepidosauromorphs, showing a sister-group relationship to 
Sauropterygia.  Either way, turtles are diapsids, and derived neodiapsids at 
that.  The other view of Michael Lee (publishing in the same ZJLS) is that 
turtles are parareptiles derived from paraphyletic parieasaurs.

If Hedges and Poling or deBraga and Rieppel are right, then the studies of 
amniote phylogeny by Gauthier et al. in the late 80s are wrong and we have 
no living basal sauropsids, they all dies with the rest of the parareptiles.

Matt Troutman
________________________________________________________________________
Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com