query: parent_taxon prodesmodon
supports: Amphibians are ectothermic, tetrapod vertebrates of the class Amphibia. Modern amphibians are all Lissamphibia. They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terrestrial, fossorial, arboreal or freshwater aquatic ecosystems. Thus amphibians typically start out as larvae living in water, but some species have developed behavioural adaptations to bypass this. The young generally undergo metamorphosis from larva with gills to an adult air-breathing form with lungs. Amphibians use their skin as a secondary respiratory surface and some small terrestrial salamanders and frogs lack lungs and rely entirely on their skin. They are superficially similar to lizards but, along with mammals and birds, reptiles are amniotes and do not require water bodies in which to breed. With their complex reproductive needs and permeable skins, amphibians are often ecological indicators; in recent decades there has been a dramatic decline in amphibian populations for many species around the globe. Vertebrates comprise all species of animals within the subphylum Vertebrata (chordates with backbones). Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with currently about 64,000 species described. Vertebrates include the jawless fish and the jawed vertebrates, which include the cartilaginous fish (sharks and rays) and the bony fish.  In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system, such as an animal, plant, fungus, archaeon, or bacterium. All known types of organisms are capable of some degree of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development and homeostasis. An organism consists of one or more cells; when it has one cell it is known as a unicellular organism; and when it has more than one it is known as a multicellular organism. Most unicellular organisms are of microscopic scale and are thus loosely described as microorganisms. Humans are multicellular organisms composed of many trillions of cells grouped into specialized tissues and organs. Prodesmodon is an extinct genus of prehistoric salamander first described from the Lance Formation . Binomial nomenclature (also called binominal nomenclature or binary nomenclature) is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, although they can be based on words from other languages. Such a name is called a binomial name (which may be shortened to just "binomial"), a binomen or a scientific name; more informally it is also called a Latin name. The first part of the name identifies the genus to which the species belongs; the second part identifies the species within the genus. For example, humans belong to the genus "Homo" and within this genus to the species "Homo sapiens". The "formal" introduction of this system of naming species is credited to Carl Linnaeus, effectively beginning with his work "Species Plantarum" in 1753. But Gaspard Bauhin, in as early as 1623, had introduced in his book "Pinax theatri botanici" (English, "Illustrated exposition of plants") many names of genera that were later adopted by Linnaeus. The Frenchman Formation is stratigraphic unit of Late Cretaceous (late Maastrichtian) age in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin. It is present in southern Saskatchewan and the Cypress Hills of southeastern Alberta. The formation was defined by G.M. Furnival in 1942 from observations of outcrops along the Frenchman River, between Ravenscrag and Highway 37. It contains the youngest of dinosaur genera, much like the Hell Creek Formation in the United States. Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by a lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All present-day salamander families are grouped together under the scientific name Urodela. Salamander diversity is most abundant in the Northern Hemisphere and most species are found in the Holarctic ecozone, with some species present in the Neotropical zone. Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with over 6,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The group, traditionally recognized as the suborder Lacertilia, is defined as all extant members of the Lepidosauria (reptiles with overlapping scales) that are neither sphenodonts (i.e., tuatara) nor snakes  they form an evolutionary grade. While the snakes are recognized as falling phylogenetically within the Toxicofera clade from which they evolved, the sphenodonts are the sister group to the squamates, the larger monophyletic group, which includes both the lizards and the snakes. The Cretaceous is a geologic period and system that spans 79 million years from the end of the Jurassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Paleogene Period Mya. It is the last period of the Mesozoic Era. The Cretaceous Period is usually abbreviated K, for its German translation "Kreide" (chalk). Fauna is all of the animal life of any particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is "flora". Flora, fauna and other forms of life such as fungi are collectively referred to as biota. Zoologists and paleontologists use "fauna" to refer to a typical collection of animals found in a specific time or place, e.g. the "Sonoran Desert fauna" or the "Burgess Shale fauna". Paleontologists sometimes refer to a sequence of faunal stages, which is a series of rocks all containing similar fossils. The Holarctic is the name for the biogeographic realm that encompasses the majority of habitats found throughout the northern continents of the world, combining Wallace's Palearctic zoogeographical region, consisting of North Africa and all of Eurasia (with the exception of the southern Arabian Peninsula, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent), and the Nearctic zoogeographical region, consisting of North America north of Southern Mexico. These regions are further subdivided into a variety of ecoregions. Many ecosystems, and the animal and plant communities that depend on them, are found across multiple continents in large portions of this realm. The continuity of these ecosystems results from the shared glacial history of the realm. The floristic Boreal Kingdom corresponds to the Holarctic realm. A genus ( genera) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms in biology. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus. The Lance (Creek) Formation is a division of Late Cretaceous (dating to about 69 - 66 Ma) rocks in the western United States. Named after Lance Creek, Wyoming, the microvertebrate fossils and dinosaurs represent important components of the latest Mesozoic vertebrate faunas. The Lance Formation is Late Maastrichtian in age (Lancian land mammal age), and shares much fauna with the Hell Creek Formation of Montana and North Dakota, the Frenchman Formation of southwest Saskatchewan, and the lower part of the Scollard Formation of Alberta.
candidates: amphibia animal chordata dinosaur fungi homo lepidosauria lizard mammal mya plant toxicofera vertebrata
answer: amphibia