Dermophis, an extant caecilian gets the DGS treatment

Sometimes bones disappear.
Other times bones become fused to one another. The extant caecilian Dermophis (Fig. 1) might demonstrate one or the other or both. Coloring the bones helps to interpret and explain their presence despite the absence of sutures due to fusion or loss.

Dermophis mexicanus (Mexican caecilian, Peters 1880; extant) The nasal and premaxilla are fused. The maxilla, lacrimal, prefrontal and palatine are fused. The occipital elements and the paraspheniod are fused (= Os basale). The parietal and postparietal are fused. The jugal, squamosal, postfrontal and postorbital are fused. The dentary and surangular are fused. The splenial, articular and angular are fused. The pterygoid and quadrate are fused.

The cheek bones are traditionally labeled squamosals, but that may not be the whole story here. Different from nearly all other basal tetrapods (including other amphibians), caecilians shift the jaw joint forward, creating a large retroarticular process of the posterior mandible.

Dermophis lives in humid to dry soils beneath leaf-litter, logs, banana or coffee leaves and hulls or similar ground cover. It is viviparous.

Ontogeny should tell
The true identity of skull bones should be able to be determined by watching their growth from small disconnected bone buds in the embryo. Unfortunately, the references I’ve seen don’t make that growth clear in all cases. So, I’m stuck, for the present, with comparative anatomy within a phylogenetic framework that nests caecilians with Acherontiscus (Fig. 4) and kin, which have large and separate cheek bones.

Limbs and limb girdles
are absent in all extant caecilians and the majority of species also lack a tail. They have a terminal cloaca, like an earthworm. Limbs are vestigial in Eocaecilia (Fig. 2), and a substantial tail is present.

The tentacle
Extant caecilians have a unique chemosensory organ located on the head called the tentacle. The tentacle exits the skull through the tentacular foramen (looks like an antorbital fenestra) located between the nares and orbit. Eocaecilia lacks this foramen (Fig. 3).

References
Peters WCH 1880 “1879”. Über die Eintheilung der Caecilien und insbesondere über die Gattungen Rhinatrema und Gymnopis. Monatsberichte der Königlichen Preussische Akademie des Wissenschaften zu Berlin 1879: 924–945.

Image above from Digimorph. org and used with permission.

wiki/Dermophis