''Jeholotriton'' is a
genus of primitive
salamander from the
Daohugou Beds (possibly dating to the late
Jurassic period) near Daohugou village of
Inner Mongolia, China.
Wang Yuan from the
Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology 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 ...
. 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, 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
Daohugou Beds is lower, Middle/Late Jurassic in age. The specific name "paradoxus" refers to the strange skull morphology of the animal.
Classification
A
phylogenetic analysis by Wang and S.E. Evans in 2006 found that ''Jeholotriton'' is a possible sister taxon to ''
Pangerpeton'', a short-bodied salamander from an adjacent locality in
Lingyuan
Lingyuan () is a city in the west of Liaoning province in Northeast China, bordering Hebei province and Inner Mongolia
Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. ...
,
Liaoning
Liaoning () is a coastal province in Northeast China that is the smallest, southernmost, and most populous province in the region. With its capital at Shenyang, it is located on the northern shore of the Yellow Sea, and is the northernmost ...
, strata comparable to the Daohugou Beds. These two taxa are close to the base of crownâgroup
Urodela (modern salamanders), either just outside it or just within.
See also
*
Prehistoric amphibian
*
List of prehistoric amphibians
References
Jurassic salamanders
Jurassic amphibians of Asia
Fossil taxa described in 2000
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