Rhineuridae [SEP] parent taxon
Rhineuridae
Rhineuridae is a family of amphisbaenians (commonly called worm lizards) that includes one living genus and species, "Rhineura floridana", as well as many extinct species belonging to both "Rhineura" and several extinct genera. The living "R. floridana" is found only in Florida no further north than the panhandle, but extinct species ranged across North America, some occurring as far west as Oregon. The family has a fossil record stretching back 60 million years to the Paleocene and was most diverse in the continental interior
Taxon in disguise
In bacteriology, a taxon in disguise is a species, genus or higher unit of biological classification whose evolutionary history reveals has evolved from another unit of similar or lower rank, making the parent unit paraphyletic. This happens when rapid evolution makes a new species appear radically different from the ancestral group, so that it is not (initially) recognised as belonging to the parent phylogenetic group, leaving the latter an evolutionary grade.
While the term is from bacteriology, parallel examples are found throughout the tree of