<i>Microleter mckinzieorum</i>gen. et sp. nov. from the Lower Permian of Oklahoma: the basalmost parareptile from Laurasia
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Lower Permian fissure fill deposits near Richards Spur (a.k.a. the Fort Sill locality), Oklahoma, have produced a remarkably rich, diverse, and well-preserved assemblage of fully terrestrial tetrapods, including the parareptiles Bolosaurus grandis, Colobomycter pholeter and Delorhynchus priscus. This study describes a superbly preserved new parareptile, Microleter mckinzieorum gen. et sp. nov., recently recovered from the site. The fossil consists of a small, gracile, mostly articulated skull with an attached lower jaw. Distinct sculpturing is present consisting of small pinprick-size pits interspersed among larger round pits, with shallow grooves radiating to the edges of some of the bones, a pattern somewhat similar to both the Oklahoman parareptile Acleistorhinus and the millerettids from South Africa. Microleter also possesses a temporal fenestra, bounded by the jugal, quadratojugal, postorbital and squamosal but open ventrally. In addition to possessing a very broad palatine, there is an indication that the lacrimal reached the naris, a feature shared with more basal parareptiles. A phylogenetic analysis, using both parsimony and Bayesian algorithms, of Palaeozoic parareptiles indicates that Microleter falls fairly basally, between the millerettids and the group including Acleistorhinus and lanthanosuchids. As such this taxon fills a significant gap in our knowledge of Early Permian and basal parareptiles, with interesting implications for biogeography. Whereas previous evidence argued for an initial Gondwanan diversification of parareptiles, the early age and basal phylogenetic position of this taxon and other parareptiles from Laurasia make this hypothesis problematic.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".