Question

A living representative of rhynchocephalian reptiles is

Answer 1

New Zealand’s endemic tuatara is a very unusual animal. They are the only living representative of a group of reptiles known as Rhynchocephalia (sometimes known in the past as Sphenodontia) that first appeared over 200 million years ago. They are not lizards.

The ancestors of tuatara were present on the landmass that would later become New Zealand, when it separated from Gondwana over 80 million years ago. They have evolved in isolation ever since.

Scientific classification

Kingdom Animalia

Phylum Chordata

Subphylum Vertebrata

Class Reptilia

Order Rhynchocephalia

Family Sphenodontidae

Genus Sphenodon

Species Punctatus

Answer 2

rhynchocephalian. Any of various mostly extinct lizardlike reptiles of the order Rhynchocephalia, whose only living representative is the tuatara ( Sphenodon punctatus and S. guntheri