Anniealexandria

Anniealexandria is an extinct genus of amphisbaenian lizard known by the type species Anniealexandria gansi from the earliest Eocene of Wyoming. Anniealexandria is the only known member of the family Bipedidae in the fossil record, which otherwise only includes the extant genus Bipes from Mexico.[1] It was named in 2009 in honor of Annie Montague Alexander, founder of the University of California Museum of Paleontology. Remains of Anniealexandria are known only from a single fossil locality in the Bighorn Basin called Castle Gardens, but within the locality its fossils are common in the Willwood Formation, usually consisting of isolated jaw bones and vertebrae. Anniealexandria seems to have been a common component of a paleofauna that included fifteen other lizard species and existed in western North America during a period of global warming in the latest Paleocene and earliest Eocene.[2]

Anniealexandria Temporal range: Early Eocene
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Order:	Squamata
Family:	Bipedidae
Genus:	†Anniealexandria Smith, 2009
Type species
†Anniealexandria gansi Smith, 2009

Below is a cladogram from Longrich et al. (2015) showing the phylogenetic relationships of Anniealexandria:[1]

Amphisbaenia	Rhineuridae     †Chthonophidae Chthonophis subterraneus       †Oligodontosaurus spp.   Amphisbaeniformes     Blanidae       †Anniealexandria gansi     Bipes spp.           Cadea blanoides       †Todrasaurus gheerbrandti   Afrobaenia     Trogonophis wiegmanni       Diplometopon zarudnyi     Agamodon anguliceps         Amphisbaenidae

References

1. Longrich, N. R.; Vinther, J.; Pyron, R. A.; Pisani, D.; Gauthier, J. A. (2015). "Biogeography of worm lizards (Amphisbaenia) driven by end-Cretaceous mass extinction". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 282 (1806): 20143034. doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.3034. PMC 4426617. PMID 25833855.
2. Smith, Krister T. (2009). "A new lizard assemblage from the earliest eocene (Zone Wa0) of the bighorn basin, wyoming, USA: Biogeography during the warmest interval of the cenozoic". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. 7 (3): 299. doi:10.1017/S1477201909002752.