Kistecephalia

Kistecephalia Temporal range: Late Permian - Middle Triassic
Restoration of the kistecephalian Dicynodontoides recurvidens
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Synapsida
Order:	Therapsida
Infraorder:	†Dicynodontia
Superfamily:	†Emydopoidea
Stem group:	†Kistecephalia Seeley, 1894

Kistecephalia is a clade of dicynodont therapsids. The group was first named in 1894, and was reinstated as a clade in 2009. Kistecephalia is a stem-based taxon defined as all taxa more closely related to Cistecephalus microrhinus than Emydops arctatus.^[1] It includes the families Myosauridae, Kingoriidae, and Cistecephalidae and is part of the larger group Emydopoidea. Kistecephalians were small in comparison to other dicynodonts. One group of kistecephalians, the cistecephalids, are thought to have been burrowers. Below is a cladogram from Kammerer et al. (2011) showing the phylogenetic relationships of kistecephalians:^[2]

Therochelonia	Diictodontia   Pylaecephalidae  Diictodon Eosimops Prosictodon Robertia  Emydopoidea  Emydops  Kistecephalia   Kingoriidae  Dicynodontoides Kombuisia Myosaurus  Cistecephalidae  Cistecephalus Cistecephaloides Kawingasaurus Bidentalia

References

1. Kammerer, C.F.; Angielczyk, K.D. (2009). "A proposed higher taxonomy of anomodont therapsids" (PDF). Zootaxa. 2018: 1–24.
2. Kammerer, C.F.; Angielczyk, K.D.; Fröbisch, J. (2011). "A comprehensive taxonomic revision of Dicynodon (Therapsida, Anomodontia) and its implications for dicynodont phylogeny, biogeography, and biostratigraphy". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 31 (Suppl. 1): 1–158. doi:10.1080/02724634.2011.627074.