Archelosaur Reptile Orders

Archelosaur Reptile Orders is a Browse By group of the Nature Atlas that gathers the living reptile orders that belong to the archelosaur lineage, the turtles and tortoises of Testudines and the crocodiles, alligators, caimans and gharials of Crocodilia. An entry belongs here when its own cited article describes an order of reptiles that is Testudines or Crocodilia. It excludes the scaled reptiles of the lizard and tuatara lineage. Most molecular studies place the turtles on the same branch as the crocodilians and the birds, so this group shows that two reptile orders that look very different, one armoured by a shell and one by bony plates, are far closer relatives of one another than either is of the lizards and snakes.