Phylogenetic Analysis of the Family Afrograptidae (Branchiopoda-Diplostraca-Estheriellina)

Abstract

No phylogenetic analyses have been conducted on fossil clam shrimp and few have explored the implications of extant clam shrimp molecular phylogenies for the fossil record. At the same time, phylogenetic hypotheses of relationships between fossil taxa have been a great topic of debate and are not very well understood. The carapace is often the only preserved element of the group in the fossil record. The systematic and evolutionary history of the group are based on their stratigraphic occurrence and morphological features of the carapace (such as size, shape, position of the umbo, ornamentation, and frequency of growth lines). In this work, we have created a morphological phylogenetic analysis on fossils clam shrimp particularly Family Afrograptidae to evaluate the phylogenetic structure of the ingroup.