''Pholiderpeton'' (from el, φολῐ́δος , 'horny scale' and el, ἑρπετόν , 'creeping thing') is an extinct genus of embolomere amphibian which lived in the Late Carboniferous

period Period may refer to: Common uses * Era, a length or span of time * Full stop (or period), a punctuation mark Arts, entertainment, and media * Period (music), a concept in musical composition * Periodic sentence (or rhetorical period), a concept ...

( Bashkirian) of England. The genus was first named by

Thomas Henry Huxley Thomas Henry Huxley (4 May 1825 – 29 June 1895) was an English biologist and anthropologist specialising in comparative anatomy. He has become known as "Darwin's Bulldog" for his advocacy of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. The stori ...

in 1869 to include the species ''P. scutigerum'', based on the disarticulated front half of a skeleton discovered near Bradford,

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...

. Associated fossil wood suggests that this specimen died inside a ''

Lepidodendron ''Lepidodendron'' is an extinct genus of primitive vascular plants belonging to the family Lepidodendraceae, part of a group of Lycopodiopsida known as scale trees or arborescent lycophytes, related to quillworts and lycopsids (club mosses). Th ...

'' tree trunk. In 1987, Jennifer A. Clack suggested that a different embolomere, ''Eogyrinus attheyi'' from Newsham,

Northumberland Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey. It is bordered by land ...

, belonged to the same genus as ''Pholiderpeton''. She subsumed the genus ''Eogyrinus'' into ''Pholiderpeton'' and created the new combination ''P. attheyi''. The anatomy of ''"Eogyrinus"'' ''attheyi'' has been described in detail by A.L. Panchen. Some

phylogenetic analyses 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 ...

, such as those by Marcello Ruta & Michael Coates (2007) and David Marjanović & Michel Laurin (2019), have argued that ''Pholiderpeton scutigerum'' and ''"Eogyrinus" attheyi'' were not closely related to each other. However, neither publication reinstated the genus ''Eogyrinus''. ''Pholiderpeton scutigerum'' measured in length, while specimens of ''P. attheyi'' could measure up to long. The latter species was thus among the largest Carboniferous

tetrapods Tetrapods (; ) are four-limbed vertebrate animals constituting the superclass Tetrapoda (). It includes extant and extinct amphibians, sauropsids (reptiles, including dinosaurs and therefore birds) and synapsids ( pelycosaurs, extinct therapsi ...

, and perhaps one of the largest of its family, the Eogyrinidae.

References

Basal tetrapods of Europe Embolomeres Carboniferous reptiliomorphs {{paleo-amphibian-stub