Limnarchia - Phylogeny

Phylogeny

Yates and Warren (2000) erected Limnarchia in their phylogenetic study of stereospondyls and their relatives. They found support for two major divisions of temnospondyls, which they named Euskelia and Limnarchia. Limnarchia included a group of small-bodied aquatic temnospondyls called Dvinosauria as the most basal members of the clade, followed by the large-bodied Archegosauroidea and the diverse Stereospondyli, which together formed the clade Stereospondylomorpha. Below is a cladogram from Yates and Warren (2000) showing this phylogeny:

Some more recent phylogenetic analyses such as Ruta et al. (2007) place Dvinosauria outside the Euskelia-Limnarchia split as much more basal temnospondyls. If this is the case, Limnarchia would include the same taxa as Stereospondylomorpha.