Academy eel [SEP] parent taxon
Academy eel
Apterichtus ansp, the Academy eel, is a species of snake eel native to the western Atlantic Ocean from North Carolina, United States through the Bahamas to Brazil. It is known to dwell down to a maximum depth of , and leads a benthic lifestyle, inhabiting burrows in the sand in surf areas. This species can reach a length of TL.
for feeding and gill ventilation in animals with an eel-like body shape, or represent primitive craniate characteristics subsequently lost or modified in gnathostomes. On this basis Janvier (1978) proposed to use the names "Vertebrata" and "Craniata" as two distinct and nested taxa.
Validity.
The validity of the taxon "Craniata" was recently examined by Delarbre et al. (2002) using mtDNA sequence data, concluding that Myxini is more closely related to Hyperoartia than to Gnathostomata - i.e., that modern jawless fishes