Phylogeny of phytosaurs

[Halichoeres]

This new study analyzes morphological data from various phytosaurs under a few different methods to try to figure out their interrelationships, using Euparkeria as an outgroup. It's a little messy! I didn't realize this, but a 2016 analysis found them to be stem-crocodiles, although more often they're recovered as stem-archosaurs. This study doesn't really address which of those is true, but it gives some hint as to how the various phytosaurs are related at any rate. Here's the consensus tree (resolving only nodes that are present in every method they used). It's got a lot of polytomies, an indication of lots of ambiguity in the data.



The paper is fairly readable and is open access: https://peerj.com/articles/5901/

[Newt]

Thanks for posting this! Phytosaur taxonomy is such a mess. They've been lumped and split and relumped and resplit so many times...

[Halichoeres]

Thanks for posting this! Phytosaur taxonomy is such a mess. They've been lumped and split and relumped and resplit so many times...

No kidding. Which is why I'm so glad Safari put the whole species name on their "Rutiodon" (Machaeroprosopus) validus!