comment on this calibration

Batrachia

 node name
Batrachia     Look for this name in NCBI   Wikipedia   Animal Diversity Web
 
  recommended citations
http://palaeo-electronica.org/content/fc-1 Benton et al. 2015
 
  node minimum age
250 Ma
The Sakamena Group in Madagascar spans from Late Permian to Middle Triassic, and the Middle Sakamena Group/ Formation is generally dated as lower Lower Triassic, the Upper Sakamena Group/ Formation, Lower to lower Middle Triassic. The entire Sakamena Group is some 4 km thick, and it is subdivided based on dominant lithologies: the middle portion is a sequence of shales and minot sandstones deposited in a logoonal or shallow lacustrine and braided river environment, whereas the units below and above are dominated by sandstones and conglomerates indicating higher energies of deposition. Dating of the Sakamena Group is notoriously difficult, as there are no radiometric dates, there has been no magnetostratigraphic study, and the associated fossils are not classic biostratigraphically useful index fossils. Nonetheless, the Middle Sakamena Group is dated as Induan on the basis of the associated fauna of benthosuchid temnospondyls (like those of the Lystrosaurus Assemblage Zone of South Africa and the Vokhmian units of Russia, as well as plants also suggesting Induan age. The top of the Induan stage is dated as "slightly older than" 251.2 Ma � 0.2 Myr (Mundil et al., 2010), and given as 250.01 Ma by Gradstein et al. (2012, p. 718), so we select this age as the minimum constraint, namely 250.0 Ma.
 
  node maximum age
272.8 Ma
It is hard to know how far down to set the soft maximum age for Batrachia, as there are no reported stem batrachians from older Triassic or Permian rocks. As for Lissamphibia, an arbitrary date is set at the base of the Middle Permian.
 
 primary fossil used to date this node 
 
MNHNFr MAE 126
Triadobatrachus massinoti, Piveteau, 1936
Location relative to the calibrated node: Crown

[show fossil details]
     Locality: Sakamena Group, Ambilombe Bay
     Stratum: Middle Sakamena Formation
     Geological age: Triassic, Mesozoic


More information in Fossilworks   PaleoBioDB
 
 

 
  phylogenetic justification
Triadobatrachus has always been recognized as basal member of Anura, within the stem Batrachia, and so the oldest member of the crown Batrachia, based on its possession of the key apomorphies of a posteriorly open maxillary arcade, absence of an ossified postparietal, tabular, jugal, and quadratojugal, and other characters (Ruta and Coates, 2007).
 
  phylogenetic reference(s)
Piveteau, J. 1936. Une forme ancestrale des Amphibiens Anoures dans le Trias inférieur de Madagascar." CR Acad. Sci., Paris 202:1607-1608.
 
 tree image (click image for full size) 
tree image
Figure 7 from Benton et al. (2014).
login