Stegocephali

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Stegocephali or Stegocephalia (from Ancient Greek: στεγοκεφαλια, lit. "roofed head") is a taxon of limbed vertebrates. In its traditional sense, Stegocephalia groups together various early limbed vertebrates, including temnospondyls and stem-tetrapods such as Ichthyostega. As Stegocephalia in the traditional sense is paraphyletic, in 1998 the Canadian paleontologist Michel Laurin proposed redefining the taxon as a clade, encompassing all limbed vertebrates, including both traditional stegocephalians and their living descendants. This proposed use of Stegocephalia replaced the traditional use of Tetrapoda, which nine years earlier had been proposed to be redefined to restrict it to the crown group. However, the traditional use of Tetrapoda for the clade of limbed vertebrates has since remained in common use.

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