query: taxon_rank lepospondyli
supports: Scotland (Scots: ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the south-west. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles and the Hebrides. The Cambrian Period (or ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 55.6 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 541 million years ago (mya) to the beginning of the Ordovician Period mya. Its subdivisions, and its base, are somewhat in flux. The period was established (as Cambrian series) by Adam Sedgwick, who named it after Cambria, the Latinised form of "Cymru", the Welsh name for Wales, where Britain's Cambrian rocks are best exposed. The Cambrian is unique in its unusually high proportion of lagerstätte sedimentary deposits, sites of exceptional preservation where "soft" parts of organisms are preserved as well as their more resistant shells. As a result, our understanding of the Cambrian biology surpasses that of some later periods. Snakes are elongated, legless, carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic, amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales. Many species of snakes have skulls with several more joints than their lizard ancestors, enabling them to swallow prey much larger than their heads with their highly mobile jaws. To accommodate their narrow bodies, snakes' paired organs (such as kidneys) appear one in front of the other instead of side by side, and most have only one functional lung. Some species retain a pelvic girdle with a pair of vestigial claws on either side of the cloaca. Adelospondyli is an order of elongate, presumably aquatic, Carboniferous amphibians. The skull is solidly roofed, and elongate, with the orbits located very far forward. The limbs are well developed. Most adelospondyls belong to the family Adelogyrinidae, although the adelospondyl "Acherontiscus" has been placed in its own family, Acherontiscidae. The group is restricted to the Mississippian (Serpukhovian Age) of Scotland. The Turkish Straits are a series of internationally-significant waterways in northwestern Turkey that connect the Aegean and Mediterranean seas to the Black Sea. The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era (from the Greek "palaios" (), "old" and "zoe" (), "life", meaning "ancient life") is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic, from . It is the longest of the Phanerozoic eras, and is subdivided into six geologic periods (from oldest to youngest): the Cambrian, Ordovician, Silurian, Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian. The Paleozoic comes after the Neoproterozoic era of the Proterozoic and is followed by the Mesozoic. Microsauria ("small lizards") is an extinct order of lepospondyl amphibians from the late Carboniferous and early Permian periods. It is the most diverse and species-rich group of lepospondyls. Recently, Microsauria has been considered paraphyletic, as several other non-microsaur lepospondyl groups such as Lysorophia seem to be nested in it. Microsauria is now commonly used as a collective term for the grade of lepospondyls that were originally classified as members of Microsauria.
  The microsaurs all had short tails and small legs, but were otherwise quite varied in form. The group included lizard-like animals that were relatively well-adapted to living on dry land, burrowing forms, and others that, like the modern axolotl, retained their gills into adult life, and so presumably never left the water. A newt is a salamander in the subfamily Pleurodelinae, also called eft during its terrestrial juvenile phase. Unlike other members of the family Salamandridae, newts are semiaquatic, alternating between aquatic and terrestrial habitats over the year, sometimes even staying in the water full-time. Not all aquatic salamanders are considered newts, however. The more than 100 known species of newts are found in North America, Europe, North Africa and Asia. Newts metamorphose through three distinct developmental life stages: aquatic larva, terrestrial juvenile (eft), and adult. Adult newts have lizard-like bodies and return to the water every year to breed, otherwise living in humid, cover-rich land habitats. Diplocaulus (meaning "double caul") is an extinct genus of lepospondyl amphibians from the Permian period of North America. It is one of the largest lepospondyls, with a distinctive boomerang-shaped skull. Remains attributed to "Diplocaulus" have been found from the Late Permian of Morocco and represent the youngest known occurrence of a lepospondyl. Lepospondyli is a diverse group of Paleozoic tetrapods ( four - limbed vertebrates ) . With the exception of one late - surviving lepospondyl from the Late Permian of Morocco ( Diplocaulus minumus ) , the group lived from the Early Carboniferous ( Mississippian ) to the Early Permian and was geographically restricted to what is now Europe and North America . Five major groups of lepospondyls are known : Adelospondyli ; Aïstopoda ; Lysorophia ; Microsauria ; and Nectridea . Lepospondyls have a diverse range of body forms and include species with newt - like , eel - or snake - like , and lizard - like forms . Various species were aquatic , semiaquatic , or terrestrial . None were large ( the biggest genus , the diplocaulid Diplocaulus , reached a meter in length , but most were much smaller ) , and they are assumed to have lived in specialized ecological niches not taken by the more numerous temnospondyl amphibians that coexisted with them in the Paleozoic . Lepospondyli was named in 1888 by Karl Alfred von Zittel , who coined the name to include some tetrapods from the Paleozoic , that shared some specific characteristics in the notochord and teeth . Acherontiscus is an extinct genus of lepospondyl amphibian that lived during the Carboniferous. The type and only species is "Acherontiscus caledoniae", named by paleontologist Robert Carroll in 1969. The superclass Tetrapoda (Ancient Greek s tetrapods, "four-footed"), or the tetrapods , comprises the first four-limbed vertebrates and their descendants, including the living and extinct amphibians, birds, mammals, reptiles and some ancient, exclusively aquatic creatures such as the Acanthostega. Tetrapods evolved from the lobe-finned fishes around 390 million years ago in the middle Devonian Period, with modern tetrapod groups having appeared by the late Devonian, 367.5 million years ago. The specific aquatic ancestors of the tetrapods, and the process by which land colonization occurred, remain unclear, and are areas of active research and debate among palaeontologists at present. In animal anatomy, the notochord is a flexible rod made out of a material similar to cartilage. If a species has a notochord, it is, by definition, a chordate. The notochord lies along the anteroposterior ("head to tail") axis, is usually closer to the dorsal than the ventral surface of the animal, and is composed of cells derived from the mesoderm. The notochord has been observed to have many functions including developmental functions. The most commonly cited functions are as a site of muscle attachment, vertebral precursor, and as a midline tissue that provides signals to the surrounding tissue during development. The axolotl (from ] ) also known as a Mexican salamander ("Ambystoma mexicanum") or a Mexican walking fish, is a neotenic salamander, closely related to the tiger salamander. Although the axolotl is colloquially known as a "walking fish", it is not a fish, but an amphibian. The species originates from numerous lakes, such as Lake Xochimilco underlying Mexico City. Axolotls are unusual among amphibians in that they reach adulthood without undergoing metamorphosis. Instead of developing lungs and taking to land, the adults remain aquatic and gilled. 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. The Ordovician is a geologic period and system, the second of six periods of the Paleozoic Era. The Ordovician spans 41.2 million years from the end of the Cambrian Period million years ago (Mya) to the start of the Silurian Period Mya. The Ordovician, named after the Celtic tribe of the Ordovices, was defined by Charles Lapworth in 1879 to resolve a dispute between followers of Adam Sedgwick and Roderick Murchison, who were placing the same rock beds in northern Wales into the Cambrian and Silurian periods, respectively. Lapworth, recognized that the fossil fauna in the disputed strata were different from those of either the Cambrian or the Silurian periods, and placed them in a period of their own. It received international sanction in 1960, when it was adopted as an official period of the Paleozoic Era by the International Geological Congress. 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. Nectridea is the name of an extinct order of lepospondyl tetrapods from the Carboniferous and Permian periods, including animals such as "Diplocaulus". In appearance, they would have resembled modern newts or aquatic salamanders, although they are not amphibians. They had long, flattened tails to aid in swimming, and well-developed hind limbs, with a full set of five toes each. Their forelimbs were somewhat reduced, however, and like modern amphibians, typically had only four toes each. Eurasia is the combined continental landmass of Europe and Asia. The term is a portmanteau of its constituent continents. Located primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Pacific Ocean to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and by Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean to the south. The division between Europe and Asia as two different continents is a historical and cultural construct, with no clear physical separation between them; thus, in some parts of the world, Eurasia is recognized as the largest of five or six continents. In geology, Eurasia is often considered as a single rigid megablock. However, the rigidity of Eurasia is debated based on the paleomagnet data. Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts (artworks), expressing the author's imaginative or technical skill, intended to be appreciated for their beauty or emotional power. In their most general form these activities include the production of works of art, the criticism of art, the study of the history of art, and the aesthetic dissemination of art. A chordate is any animal belonging to the phylum Chordata, possessing a notochord, a hollow dorsal nerve cord, pharyngeal slits, an endostyle, and a post-anal tail for at least some period of its life cycle. The Chordata, together with sister clade Ambulacraria, form the deuterostomes as in the embryo development stage the anus forms before the mouth. Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia (also called Metazoa). The animal kingdom emerged as a basal clade within Apoikozoa as a sister of the choanoflagellates. Sponges are the most basal clade of animals. Animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently at some point in their lives. Their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs: they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance. The Silurian is a geologic period and system spanning 24.6 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, Mya. As with other geologic periods, the rock beds that define the period's start and end are well identified, but the exact dates are uncertain by several million years. The base of the Silurian is set at a major Ordovician-Silurian extinction event when 60% of marine species were wiped out. Anatomy is the branch of biology concerned with the study of the structure of organisms and their parts. Anatomy is inherently tied to embryology, comparative anatomy, evolutionary biology, and phylogeny, as these are the processes by which anatomy is generated over immediate (embryology) and long (evolution) timescales. Human anatomy is one of the basic essential sciences of medicine. Morocco (', lit. "The West"; '), officially known as the Kingdom of Morocco (', lit. "The Western Kingdom"; '), is a sovereign country located in the Maghreb region of North Africa. Geographically, Morocco is characterized by a rugged mountainous interior, large tracts of desert, and a lengthy coastline along the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. To the east and southeast, Europe is generally considered as separated from Asia by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. Yet the non-oceanic borders of Europea concept dating back to classical antiquityare arbitrary. The primarily physiographic term "continent" as applied to Europe also incorporates cultural and political elements whose discontinuities are not always reflected by the continent's current overland boundaries. Lysorophia is an order of aquatic Carboniferous and Permian amphibians within the extinct subclass Lepospondyli. Lysorophians resembled small snakes, as their bodies are extremely elongate. There is a single family, the Cocytinidae (previously known as Lysorophidae). Currently there are around five genera included within Lysorophia.
candidates: branch class division form genus group kingdom order phylum series species subclass subfamily suborder superclass tribe
answer: subclass