The Mastodonsauroidea are an
extinct
Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...
superfamily
SUPERFAMILY is a database and search platform of structural and functional annotation for all proteins and genomes. It classifies amino acid sequences into known structural domains, especially into SCOP superfamilies. Domains are functional, str ...
of
temnospondyl
Temnospondyli (from Greek language, Greek τέμνειν, ''temnein'' 'to cut' and σπόνδυλος, ''spondylos'' 'vertebra') is a diverse order (biology), order of small to giant tetrapods—often considered Labyrinthodontia, primitive amphi ...
amphibians
Amphibians are four-limbed and ectothermic vertebrates of the class Amphibia. All living amphibians belong to the group Lissamphibia. They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terrestrial, fossorial, arbore ...
known from the
Triassic.
Fossils belonging to this superfamily have been found in
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
,
Greenland,
Europe,
Asia, and
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
. The genus ''
Ferganobatrachus
''Gobiops'' is an extinct genus of temnospondyl from the Jurassic of Mongolia, China, and possibly Kyrgyzstan. The genus is represented by a single species, ''Gobiops desertus''. It was named in 1991 from the Late Jurassic Shar Teeg Beds of Mongo ...
'' from the Jurassic of Asia was initially included in this superfamily but later reinterpreted as a
brachyopid
Brachyopidae is an extinct family of temnospondyl labyrintodonts. They evolved in the early Mesozoic and were mostly aquatic. A fragmentary find from Lesotho, Africa is estimated to have been long, the largest amphibian ever known to have lived ...
and given a new name
Gobiops.
References
The Paleobiology Database*& 2007 "Revision of the type material and nomenclature of ''Mastodonsaurus giganteus'' (Jaeger) (Temnospondyli) from the middle Triassic of Germany" ''Palaeontology'' 505:1245-1266
External links
Vertebrate superfamilies
Triassic temnospondyls
Jurassic temnospondyls
Early Triassic first appearances
Middle Jurassic extinctions
Capitosaurs
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