Euskelia
| Euskelia Temporal range: Pennsylvanian - Early Triassic, | |
|---|---|
| Mounted skeleton of Eryops, American Museum of Natural History | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Order: | †Temnospondyli |
| Suborder: | †Euskelia Yates and Warren, 2000 |
| Superfamilies | |
| Synonyms | |
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Euskelia is a proposed clade of extinct temnospondyl amphibians. The naming derives from the ancient Greek eu, meaning "true", and skelos, meaning "limb", in reference to well-ossified limb bones with crests to which muscles were attached.
Euskelia is a stem-based taxon including all temnospondyls more closely related to Eryops (an eryopoid) than to Parotosuchus (a stereospondyl). The clade was named by Yates & Warren (2000), whose phylogenetic analysis argued that eryopoids were more closely related to dissorophoids than to stereospondyls. Euskelia was intended to encompass the terrestrial eryopoid+dissorophoid clade, opposite to the clade Limnarchia, which included aquatic groups such as dvinosaurs and stereospondylomorphs.
Other studies propose a different structure of the temnospondyl family tree. For example, Schoch (2013) considered eryopoids to be closer to stereospondylomorphs than to dissorophoids. That study offered the name Eryopiformes for the eryopoid+stereospondylomorph clade, excluding dissorophoids.