A new genusLiaousof early Anisian Stage (Middle Triassic) brachiopods from southwestern China: systematics, reassessment of classification of the Spiriferinioidea, community paleoecology, and paleoenvironmental implications

This paper describes a new genus Liaous , with L. shaiwensis He and Chen n. gen. n. sp. as the type species, from the Xinyuan Formation of Anisian age in Ziyun, southern Guizhou, China. The phylogenetic tree revealed by the parsimony analysis shows that Liaous is closely allied to both Mentzelia Quenstedt, 1871 and Paramentzelia Xu, 1978 of the subfamily Mentzeliinae. A new classification scheme for the Spiriferinoidea is also proposed based on...