Re: [dinosaur] Yaksha, new albanerpet[...]id in amber from Cretaceous of Myanmar, with "slingshot" tongue

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> [Note that this specimen was found in Cretaceous amber from Myanmar, a 
> subject of major controversy over the conditions under which amber 
> thereÂcurrently is mined and sold. Some journals have decided not to publish 
> research based on amber from Myanmar. According to press material, however, 
> "Specimens were acquired following the ethical guidelines for the use of 
> Burmese amber set forth by the Society for Vertebrate Paleontology."]

The supp. inf. makes a major point of this and even presents itself as a model 
of how this should be done.

*Yaksha* adds to the evidence that Lissamphibia and Albanerpetidae are 
sister-groups. But what's perhaps most interesting is what its addition to 
published matrices does to the results. Huttenlocker et al. (2013) found 
classic polyphyly, with the frogs & salamanders as amphibamid temnospondyls and 
the caecilians (well, *Eocaecilia*) as "microsaurs"; adding *Yaksha* (Daza et 
al. 2020: fig. 4C, S12) leaves *Eocaecilia* where it was in 95% of the most 
parsimonious trees (the other 5% are secret), but places the albanerpetids next 
to the frogs + salamanders and finds that whole clade next to the only included 
lysorophian, *Brachydectes*. The published matrix of the *Chinlestegophis* 
paper, Pardo et al. (2017), didn't contain any "microsaurs" or lysorophians, 
only temnospondyls and lissamphibians (plus 2 lonely outgroups); it found four 
equally most parsimonious arrangements for the extant amphibian groups, namely 
monophyly in the amphibamids, monophyly including *Chinlestegophis* in the 
amphibamids, monophyly in the stereospondyls and diphyly with caecilians next 
to *Chinlestegophis* but frogs + salamanders in the amphibamids. Adding 
*Yaksha* restricts this to the first option, with Albanerpetidae as the 
sister-group of Karauridae + Lissamphibia (Daza et al. 2020: fig. 4, S14).