Currently the phylogenetic relationships of coelacanths
to tetrapods and/or lungfishes are still unsolved.
In modern cladistics, with the search for shared
derived characters and sister-group relationships, the
coelacanth either appears as a sister-group of lungfishes
or lungfishes appear as a sister-group of tetrapods
and the nearest living relatives to tetrapods (discussion
in Forey 1988, Gorr & Kleinschmidt 1993)
(Fig. 3). New findings in skull anatomy and molecular
genetics (Meyer 1995, Zardoya & Meyer 1996) corroborate
the hypothesis that lungfishes and coelacanths
are a monophyletic group and together form a sistergroup
to tetrapod