the phylogeny of gharials is significantly impacted by homoplasy. these endangered reptiles are made up of two different species: "gavialis gangeticus" and "tomistoma schlegelii". an important distinction between the two is that under morphological analysis of extant species and fossils, "tomistoma" is considered a true crocodile, while "gavialis" is not, with the two species' shared characteristic of fish eating being a product of homoplasy. however, molecular data suggests that the gharials are sister taxa, with their shared fish eating trait being a result of homology. further complicating matters is molecular and morphological data suggesting that the genus of thoracosaurs emerged within the lineage of gharials, despite the fact that the now extinct thoracosaurs actually emerged much sooner than gharials. lee and yates conducted a study aiming to combine molecular and morphological methods in order to address this anomaly and distinguish which traits were due to homology, and which were due to homoplasy. they checked living and fossilized crocodiles for a comprehensive list of known traits, and created a supermatrix made up of 10 nuclear genes. the resulting data were analyzed by parsimony and tip dating methods. from their research, they confirmed that the two species of gharials were indeed sister taxa, meaning that the shared traits between "tomistoma" and true crocodiles were a result of homoplasy. they also concluded that the only possible explanation for the data placing thoracosaurs within the gharial lineage was a significant amount of homoplastic convergence between thoracosaurs and "gavialis".