Pantestudines

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Pantestudines or Pan-Testudines is the proposed group of all reptiles more closely related to turtles than to any other living animal. It includes both modern turtles (crown group turtles, also known as Testudines) and all of their extinct relatives (also known as stem-turtles). Pantestudines with a complete shell are placed in the clade Testudinata. The phylogenetic placement of turtles relative to other reptiles has long been the subject of controversy. Genetic evidence strongly supports that turtles are cladistically diapsids more closely related to archosaurs (crocodilians and birds) than to lizards and snakes, with the clade containing archosaurs and turtles being dubbed Archelosauria.

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