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Sphenodontia is an order of lizard-like reptiles that includes only one living genus, the tuatara (Sphenodon). Despite its current lack of diversity, the Sphenodontia at one time included a wide array of genera in several families, and represents a lineage stretching back to the Mesozoic Era.
Taxonomy Sphenodontia, once a wastebin taxon containing a diverse array of unrelated reptiles (notably the rhynchosaurs), today consists of three families--The possibly paraphyletic Gephyrosauridae, the Pleurosauridae, and the Sphenodontidae. Sphenodontidae is the family which contains all modern tuatara, as well as a number of extinct subfamilies. Classification Classification follows Wu (1994), Evans et al. (2001), and Apesteguia & Novas (2003) *. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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