Bairdemydita

Gaffney, Eugene S., Meylan, Peter A., Wood, Roger C., Simons, Elwyn & De Almeida Campos, Diogenes, 2011, Evolution Of The Side-Necked Turtles: The Family Podocnemididae, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2011 (350), pp. 1-237 : 48

Infratribe Bairdemydita , new

DIAGNOSIS: Members of the Subtribe Stereogenyina ; cheek emargination present; labial ridge high and narrow; angle of front of skull is 90 ° or less, in contrast to the Infratribe Stereogenyita in which it exceeds 90 °; pinched snout absent (slightly developed in Bairdemys hartsteini and approached by Bairdemys winkleri ).

INCLUDED TAXA: Bairdemys Gaffney and Wood, 2002 ; Cordichelys , n. gen.; Latentemys , n. gen.

DISCUSSION: The other clade coordinate with this one is the Infratribe Stereogenyita , which has no cheek emargination. There is, however, a serious problem with this character as only one specimen in this subtribe is determinable (a Stereogenys ); the other three genera lack preserved cheeks. However, the two clades are also distinguishable by the labial ridge, which is low and thick in the Stereogenyita and high and thin in the Bairdemydita , the primitive condition. The angle of the snout is somewhat arbitrary, and the identification of what is a pinched snout and what is not has varied in the literature ( Gaffney and Wood, 2002; Sánchez-Villagra and Winkler, 2006; Gaffney et al., 2008).