Eryopidae are a family of medium to large Permian

Permian

The PermianThe term "Permian" was introduced into geology in 1841 by Sir Sir R. I. Murchison, president of the Geological Society of London, who identified typical strata in extensive Russian explorations undertaken with Edouard de Verneuil; Murchison asserted in 1841 that he named his "Permian...

 temnospondyli

Temnospondyli

Temnospondyli is a diverse order of small to giant tetrapods—often considered primitive amphibians—that flourished worldwide during the Carboniferous, Permian, and Triassic periods. A few species continued into the Cretaceous. Fossils have been found on every continent...

 amphibians, known from North America and Europe. They are defined cladistically

Cladistics

Cladistics is a method of classifying species of organisms into groups called clades, which consist of an ancestor organism and all its descendants . For example, birds, dinosaurs, crocodiles, and all descendants of their most recent common ancestor form a clade...

 as all Eryopoidea

Eryopoidea

Eryopoidea are a taxon of late Carboniferous and Permian temnospondyli amphibians, known from North America and Europe. Carroll includes no less than ten families, but Yates and Warren replace this with a cladistic approach and include only two Permian families, the Eryopidae and Zatrachydidae...

 with interpterygoid vacuities (spaces in the interpterygoid bone) that are rounded at the front; and large external nares (Laurin and Steyer 2000). Not all of the genera previously included in the Eryopidae (Carroll 1988) are retained under the cladistic revisions.

External links

• Eryopoidea - Mikko's Phylogeny Archive