RE: Turtles and Crocodylians are not Reptiles - no? What are they?

[evelyn sobielski <koreke77@yahoo.de>]

> As for the molecular phylogenies... they do tend to align
> turtles with the archosaurs, as either non-archosaur
> archosauromorphs, or as true-blue archosaurs (sister taxon
> to crocodilians, if I recall correctly).

You need a good sample of turtles there, to avoid the problems posed by the 
fact that molecular evolution in some turtles is slooooooooow (which would make 
them appear more distantr from their closest living relatives than they 
actually are). Of course, introducing different rates of character change in a 
clade is gonna cause problems of its own.


Eike


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