[Taxacom] Subclass Lepidosauria classification recoded

[Kenneth Kinman]

Dear All,           
      I haven't updated my classification of Subclass
Lepidosauria since May 2009, and since a new paper on the placement of
turtles came out this week (in the journal Biology Letters), I decided
to make a couple of changes in the coding.                  

       Due to the molecular evidence presented in that
recent paper (as well as morphological evidence published previously), I

am moving (recoding) Orders Sauropterygiformes and Testudiniformes into
the adjacent clade with lizards and their immediate relatives. This is
also more in line with those who believe that the euryapsid skull arose
independently in ichthyosauriforms and sauropterygiforms (although I
consider this a parallelism, rather than a convergence).            
      And I am so convinced that turtles and
Sauropterygiforms are closely related that I am now coding the older
taxon Sauropterygiformes as the paraphyletic mother group to
Testudiniformes (rather than as sister groups). But whether the latter
arose before or after the Permo-Triassic extinction event remains to be
seen. Here is my classification of Lepidosauria (first in 2009, followed

by the revised present classification). And below that is the citation
for the paper on turtle microRNAs.               

My classification in May 2009:   

    LEPIDOSAURIA% (basal diapsids) 
           1 Araeosceliformes 
           2 Plesion Coelurosauravidae 
           3 Plesion Apsisaurus 
           ? Plesion Galesphyrus 
           4 Plesion Claudiosaurus 
           5 Plesion Heliosaurus 
           6 Younginiformes 
          7A Ichthyosauriformes 
           ? Thalattosauriformes 
           B Sauropterygiformes 
           C Testudiniformes (turtles) 
          8A Eolacertiliformes 
           B Sphenodontiformes (tuatara)  
           C Squamatiformes (lizards, etc.)
           9 Choristoderiformes 
         10A Trilophosauriformes 
           B Rhynchosauriformes 
          11 Protorosauriformes (prolacertiforms) 
          12 Proterosuchiformes% 
         _a_ {{Archosauria}}     

My present classification:     

    LEPIDOSAURIA% (basal diapsids) 
           1 Araeosceliformes 
           2 Plesion Coelurosauravidae 
           3 Plesion Apsisaurus 
           ? Plesion Galesphyrus 
           4 Plesion Claudiosaurus 
           5 Plesion Heleosaurus 
           6 Younginiformes 
           7 Ichthyosauriformes 
           ? Thalattosauriformes 
          8A Sauropterygiformes% 
         _a_ Testudiniformes (turtles) 
           B Eolacertiliformes 
           C Sphenodontiformes (tuatara) 
           D Squamatiformes (lizards, etc.) 
           9 Choristoderiformes 
         10A Trilophosauriformes 
           B Rhynchosauriformes 
          11 Protorosauriformes (prolacertiforms) 
          12 Proterosuchiformes% 
         _a_ {{Archosauria}}        
                                            
Lyson, Sperling, Heimberg, Gauthier, King, and Peterson, 2011.
"MicroRNAs support a turtle + lizard clade."  
http://rsbl.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/07/08/rsbl.2011.0477.short?rss=1