Pholiderpeton scutigerum on display at the
Cliffe Castle Museum The
holotype of
Pholiderpeton scutigerum is a partial skeleton found in the Black-bed coal layer exposed at Toftshaw
colliery near Bradford, Yorkshire. The specimen was initially described by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1869, with further discussion by Louis C. Miall (1870) and
D.M.S. Watson (1926, 1929). The specimen was prepared more fully in the late 20th century, enabling a more detailed description by
Jenny Clack (1983, 1987). Watson's 1926 reconstruction of "
Eogyrinus"
attheyi included a large boxy shoulder girdle, but later authors concluded that this set of bones actually belonged to a lobe-finned fish, probably a rhizodont. In 1958,
Alfred Sherwood Romer attempted to name another species,
Pholiderpeton bretonensis, based on jaw material from the
Point Edward Formation of
Nova Scotia. Later scrutiny noted that these jaws shared no diagnostic traits with
Pholiderpeton, rendering
Pholiderpeton bretonensis an invalid species of indeterminate embolomere fossils. ==Classification==