''Eophis'' is an early genus of stem-snake (clade

Ophidia __FORCETOC__ Ophidia (also known as Pan-Serpentes) is a group of squamate reptiles including modern snakes and reptiles more closely related to snakes than to other living groups of lizards. Ophidia was defined as the "most recent common ancesto ...

) containing one species, ''Eophis underwoodi'', from the

Middle Jurassic The Middle Jurassic is the second Epoch (geology), epoch of the Jurassic Period (geology), Period. It lasted from about 174.1 to 161.5 million years ago. Fossils of land-dwelling animals, such as dinosaurs, from the Middle Jurassic are relativel ...

(Bathonian) from the

Forest Marble Formation The Forest Marble is a geological formation in England. Part of the Great Oolite Group, it dates to the late Bathonian stage of the Middle Jurassic.Weishampel, David B; et al. (2004). "Dinosaur distribution (Middle Jurassic, Europe)." In: Weisha ...

of United Kingdom. It is known from a fragmentary dentary from

Kirtlington Quarry Kirtlington Quarry is a geological Site of Special Scientific Interest west of Kirtlington in Oxfordshire. It is a Geological Conservation Review site, and it is part of the Kirtlington Quarry Local Nature Reserve. Kirtlington Quarry is one of ...

. It was previously interpreted as an

anguimorph The Anguimorpha is a suborder of squamates. The group was named by Fürbringer in 1900 to include all autarchoglossans closer to '' Varanus'' and ''Anguis'' than ''Scincus''. These lizards, along with iguanians and snakes, constitute the propose ...

lizard. The placement of ''Eophis'' as a stem snake was re-affirmed by subsequent analyses.

Phylogeny

Cladogram A cladogram (from Greek language, Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an Phylogenetic tree, evolutionary tree because it does not s ...

based in the phylogenetic analysis by Caldwell ''et al.'' (2015):

References

Ophidia Prehistoric reptile genera Middle Jurassic reptiles of Europe Fossil taxa described in 2015 {{paleo-reptile-stub

Phylogeny

See also

References