Platycepsion

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Platycepsion wilksoni is an extinct amphibian from Australia. It is known from a partial skeleton found in shale at the Gosford Quarry site, part of the Terrigal Formation. The fossil may represent a larval stage, since it shows external gills, which would be the first evidence of larval development in its group, the stereospondyls.

Taxonomy and naming: This species is the only one in the genus Platycepsion (a monotypic genus). It was first named Platyceps wilkinsonii by William Stephens in 1887. In 1964, Oskar Kuhn moved it to the genus Platycepsion because the name Platyceps had already been used for a snake. Thus it became Platycepsion wilksoni. John W. Cosgriff at one point described it as the type species for a new genus Blinasaurus, not knowing about Kuhn’s change, and placed a second species in the same group, later moved to Batrachosuchus henwoodi. The original epithet Wilkinsonii honors C. S. Wilkinson, deputy chair of the Linnean Society of New South Wales.

Classification: Kingdom Animalia; Phylum Chordata; Clade Tetrapoda; Order Temnospondyli; Suborder Stereospondyli; Family Brachyopidae; Genus Platycepsion; Species wilksoni.