News item: temnospondyl body impressions

[Allen Hazen <allenph@unimelb.edu.au>]

For those NOT at the GSA meetings in Denver where this was announced:
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Ancient-Amphibians.html?_r=1&oref=slog
in

Temnospondyls apparently had smooth, unarmored, skin.  Who knows: the day
may come when (everyone long since having absorbed the lessons of cladistics
and gotten bored with its pedantry) we'll start calling them "amphibians"
again.  Meanwhile, it's reassuring to hear that some stem-group amphibians
seem to have shared a derived soft-tissue condition with the crown group.

Allen Hazen
Philosophy Department
University of Melbourne