Allokotosaurians are not still archosauromorphs

You can blame Nesbitt et al 2015 for this problem.
Roig et al 2024 borrowed their cladogram and wrote, “Allokotosauria (Trilophosauridae + Azendohsauridae) is a clade of Early – Late Triassic quadruped, sprawling archosauromorphs.”

“Allokotosauria was named in 2015 (Nesbitt et al. 2015) and the first comprehensive phylogeny of the group, including all their unambiguous members and currently valid species, has been published very recently (Sengupta et al. 2024) based on a new iterative modification of the Complete Archosauromorph Tree Project (CoArTreeP) data matrix (Ezcurra 2016, 2024).”

Back in 2015 (link below), I wrote,
“Unfortunately too few taxa were tested in the Nesbitt et al. study. Nesbitt et al. tested 29 taxa and found that Azendohsaurus nested between Teraterpeton + Trilophosaurus and Pamelaria at the base of their Archosauromorpha. Several mismatches occur here with great phylogenetic distances between purported sister taxa. The tree also mixes lepidosauromorphs with archosauromorphs, once again demonstrating convergence within the two major clades of reptiles.”

In the LRT azhdenosaurs and trilophosaurs are in sister clades within a larger Rhynchosauria within a larger Sphenodontia = Rhynchocephalia within a larger Lepidosauria. They are all sprawling taxa.

Figure 2. Subset of the LRT focusing on Sphenodontia.Blue bars are taxa omitted by the authors. ” data-image-caption=”

Figure 2. Subset of the LRT focusing on Sphenodontia.Blue bars are taxa omitted by the authors.

” data-medium-file=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/sphenodontia-cladogram588-1.jpg?w=300″ data-large-file=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/sphenodontia-cladogram588-1.jpg?w=584″ class=”size-full wp-image-51536″ src=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/sphenodontia-cladogram588-1.jpg” alt=”Figure 2. Subset of the LRT focusing on Sphenodontia.Blue bars are taxa omitted by the authors.” width=”584″ height=”564″ srcset=”https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/sphenodontia-cladogram588-1.jpg?w=584&h=564 584w, https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/sphenodontia-cladogram588-1.jpg?w=150&h=145 150w, https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/sphenodontia-cladogram588-1.jpg?w=300&h=290 300w, https://pterosaurheresies.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/sphenodontia-cladogram588-1.jpg 588w” sizes=”(max-width: 584px) 100vw, 584px” />

Figure 2. From 2020. Subset of the LRT focusing on Sphenodontia.Blue bars are taxa omitted by the authors. Test this hypothesis by simply adding taxa.

We can blame Benton 1985
for nesting Rhynchosaurs within the Archosauromorpha. This was one of the very first software assisted analyses, and it included way too few taxa.

The LRT includes so many taxa in order to minimize taxon exclusion and so test published cladograms.

Unfortunately, no one wants to add the pertinent taxa indicated by the LRT. No one wants to step on Benton’s hypothesis, either. He writes college textbooks that teachers around the world teach from.

The rest of the Roig et al 2024 paper was
also hobbled by taxon exclusion. Their figure 1 cladogram includes only 15 chiefly suprageneric taxa that has all the usual problems, mixing lepidosauromorphs with archosauromorphs in a crude shuffle that is, nevertheless, acceptable to academics, editors and referees while still being demonstrably wrong.

By contrast the large reptile tree had 610 taxa in 2015 and has 2328 taxa today. By testing more taxa the topology is more finely and precisely modeled to replicate evolutionary events with microevolutionary ‘baby steps’ between related taxa. Taxon omission is minimized.

Add taxa to test the LRT for yourself. Don’t borrow small cherry-picked cladograms.

References
Benton MJ 1985. Classification and phylogeny of the diapsid reptiles. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 84 (2): 97–164.
Nesbitt SJ, Flynn JJ, Pritchard AC, Parrish JM, Rar Ivohar Imanana L, Wyss AR. 2015. Postcranial osteology of Azendohsaurus madagaskarensis (?Middle to Upper Triassic, Isalo Group, Madagascar) and its systematic position among stem archosaur reptiles. Bull Am Museum Nat Hist. 398:1–126. doi: 10.1206/ amnb-899-00-1-126.1 .
Roig MG, Miño-Boilini and Ezcurra MD 2024. The biogeographic history of the allokotosaurian archosauromorphs in the Triassic of Pangaea. Historical Biology https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2024.2409871

wiki/Allokotosauria

Azendohsaurus postcrania