Evolutionary lineages within the Carboniferous ammonoid superfamily Goniatitaceae
can be recognized using cladistic and stratophenetic analyses, showing that both ap-
proaches lead to coinciding results. In the late Viséan and Namurian A, ammonoid
provinces can be defined by the distribution of lineages within the goniatite superfamily
Goniatitaceae.  The first province corresponds to the Subvariscan Realm (where the
superfamily became extinct near the Viséan-Namurian boundary), and the second ein-
braces the majority of the occurrences, e.g. the South Urals, Central Asia, and North
America (where the superfamily with different independent lieages continued up into the
late Namurian A).  In the Viséan, the superfamily was, in two short epochs, globally
distributed with major transgressions, which probably led to migration events.  The first
is at the end of the late Viséan A (G. fimbriatus and G. spirifer Zones, when the genus
Goniatites had a world-wide distribution with various species), and the second at the
beginning of the late Viséan C (L poststriatum Zone, when Lusitanoceras is globally
distributed).