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The evolution of tetrapods began about 400 million years ago in the Devonian Period with the earliest tetrapods evolved from lobe-finned fishes. [1] Tetrapods (under the apomorphy-based definition used on this page) are categorized as animals in the biological superclass Tetrapoda, which includes all living and extinct amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
A major difference between early tetrapodomorph fishes and early tetrapods was in the relative development of the front and back skull portions; the snout is much less developed than in most early tetrapods and the post-orbital skull is exceptionally longer than an amphibian's. A notable characteristic that make a tetrapod's skull different ...
Early tetrapod trackways. There are several cases of reported trackways of the earliest land-going vertebrates, also known as tetrapods. These trackways provide crucial insights to the study of the transition of aquatic to terrestrial lifestyles in vertebrate evolution. Such fossils help to illuminate not only the timing of this keystone ...
Diadectidae is an extinct family of early tetrapods that lived in what is now North America and Europe during the Late Carboniferous and Early Permian, and in Asia during the Late Permian. They were the first herbivorous tetrapods, and also the first fully terrestrial animals to attain large sizes. Footprints indicate that diadectids walked ...
Tulerpeton is one of the early transition tetrapods – a marine animal capable of living on land. The separation of the pectoral-shoulder girdle from the head allowed the head to move up and down, and the strengthening of the legs and arms allowed the early tetrapods to propel themselves on land. Tulerpeton is important in the study of dactyly.
Ichthyostegalia is an order of extinct Tetrapodomorphs, representing the earliest landliving vertebrates.The group is thus an evolutionary grade rather than a clade. [1] While the group are recognized as having feet rather than fins, most, if not all, had internal gills in adulthood and lived primarily as shallow water fish and spent minimal time on land.
Lepospondyli is a diverse taxon of early tetrapods. With the exception of one late-surviving lepospondyl from the Late Permian of Morocco (Diplocaulus minimus), [4] lepospondyls lived from the Visean stage of the Early Carboniferous to the Early Permian and were geographically restricted to what is now Europe and North America. [5][2] Five ...
Ichthyostega (from Greek: ἰχθῦς ikhthûs, 'fish' and Greek: στέγη stégē, 'roof') is an extinct genus of limbed tetrapodomorphs from the Late Devonian of what is now Greenland. It was among the earliest four-limbed vertebrates ever in the fossil record and was one of the first with weight-bearing adaptations for terrestrial locomotion.