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The tetrapods, including all large- and medium-sized land animals, have been among the best understood animals since earliest times. By Aristotle 's time, the basic division between mammals, birds and egg-laying tetrapods (the " herptiles ") was well known, and the inclusion of the legless snakes into this group was likewise recognized. [ 28 ]
Suborder Charadrii (plover-like waders). Family Charadriidae (plovers and lapwings); Family Haematopodidae (oystercatchers); Family Ibidorhynchidae (ibisbill); Family Recurvirostridae (avocets and stilts)
Though stem-tetrapods originated in the preceding Devonian, it was in the earliest Carboniferous that the first crown tetrapods appeared, with full scaleless skin and five digits. During this time, amphibians (including many extinct groups unrelated to modern forms, referred to as "basal tetrapods") were the predominant tetrapods, and included ...
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.
Primitive four-legged animals, the ancestors of Amphibians, Reptiles, Synapsids, birds, as part of Reptiles , and mammals, synapsids. For more information, see Tetrapod . Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tetrapoda .
Amniotes are tetrapod vertebrate animals belonging to the clade Amniota, a large group that comprises the vast majority of living terrestrial and semiaquatic vertebrates. Amniotes evolved from amphibious stem tetrapod ancestors during the Carboniferous period .
It was a small, lizard-like animal, about 20 to 30 centimetres (7.9 to 11.8 in) long, with numerous sharp teeth indicating an insectivorous diet. [40] Other examples include Westlothiana (for the moment considered a reptiliomorph rather than a true amniote) [41] and Paleothyris, both of similar build and presumably similar habit.
Several groups of tetrapods, such as the reptillian snakes and mammalian cetaceans, have lost some or all of their limbs, and many tetrapods have returned to partially aquatic or (in the case of cetaceans and sirenians) fully aquatic lives. The tetrapods evolved from the lobe-finned fishes about 395 million years ago in the Devonian. [23]