''Jeholotriton'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

of primitive

salamander Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their 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 t ...

from the

Daohugou Beds The Haifanggou Formation (), also known as the Jiulongshan Formation (), is a fossil-bearing rock deposit located near Daohugou () village of Ningcheng County, in Inner Mongolia, northeastern China. The formation consists of coarse conglomerat ...

(possibly dating to the late

Jurassic The Jurassic ( ) is a geologic period and stratigraphic system that spanned from the end of the Triassic Period million years ago (Mya) to the beginning of the Cretaceous Period, approximately Mya. The Jurassic constitutes the middle period of ...

period) near Daohugou village of

Inner Mongolia Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a ...

, China. Wang Yuan from the

Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology The Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP; ) of China is a research institution and collections repository for fossils, including many dinosaur and pterosaur specimens (many from the Yixian Formation). As its name sugges ...

of the Chinese Academy of Sciences first described the species in

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...

. In 2005, he presented a full description in the ''Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology'' along with C. S. Rose from James Madison University, United States. The genus name "Jehol-" refers to

Jehol Biota The Jehol Biota includes all the living organisms – the ecosystem – of northeastern China between 133 and 120 million years ago. This is the Lower Cretaceous ecosystem which left fossils in the Yixian Formation and Jiufotang Formation. These ...

, which flourished during the Early Cretaceous in northeastern China. The original naming paper (Wang, 2000) regarded the salamander a member of the biota, but recent studies reveals this fossil-bearing

is lower, Middle/Late Jurassic in age. The specific name "paradoxus" refers to the strange skull morphology of the animal.

Classification

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

analysis by Wang and S.E. Evans in 2006 found that ''Jeholotriton'' is a possible sister taxon to ''

Pangerpeton ''Pangerpeton'' is an extinct genus of salamanders. Its monotypic species is ''Pangerpeton sinensis''. ''Pangerpeton'' is a metamorphosed, primitive salamander from the Late Jurassic Daohugou fossil bed near Wubaiding Village of Lingyuan City, L ...

'', a short-bodied salamander from an adjacent locality in Lingyuan, Liaoning, strata comparable to the Daohugou Beds. These two taxa are close to the base of crown−group

Urodela Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their 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 ten ...

(modern salamanders), either just outside it or just within.

References

Jurassic salamanders Jurassic amphibians of Asia Fossil taxa described in 2000 {{jurassic-animal-stub

Classification

See also

References