Testudinata is the group of all tetrapods with a true turtle shell. It includes both modern turtles (Testudines) and many of their extinct, shelled relatives (stem-turtles). Though it was first coined as the group containing turtles by

Jacob Theodor Klein Jacob Theodor Klein (nickname ''Plinius Gedanensium''; 15 August 1685 – 27 February 1759) was a German jurist, historian, botanist, zoologist, mathematician and diplomat in service of Polish King August II the Strong. Life Klein was born on 15 ...

in 1760, it was first defined in the modern sense by Joyce and colleagues in 2004. Testudinata does not include the primitive stem-turtle '' Odontochelys'', which only had the bottom half of a shell. A recent phylogenetic tree of Testudinata included

Angolachelonia Angolachelonia is a clade of extinct turtles from the Late Jurassic to Paleogene of Eurasia. The group is defined as all taxa derived from the ancestor of the type genus ''Angolachelys'' and '' Solnhofia'', a definition that could potentially e ...

and Testudines as sister-taxa and subgroups of Testudinata.

Classification

The cladogram below follows an analysis by Jérémy Anquetin in 2012.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q16114972 Reptile taxonomy Norian first appearances Extant Late Triassic first appearances Taxa named by Jacob Theodor Klein