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As aquatic tetrapods began their transition to land, several skeletal changes are thought to have occurred to allow for movement and respiration on land. Some adaptations required to adjust to non-aquatic life include the movement and use of alternating limbs, the use of pelvic appendages as sturdy propulsors, and the use of a solid surface at ...
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.
At any rate, it demonstrates that the fish–tetrapod transition was accompanied by significant character incongruence in functionally important structures.". [70] p. 638. From the end of the Devonian to the Mid Carboniferous a 30 million year gap occurs in the fossil record.
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.
Jennifer Alice Clack, FRS, FLS (née Agnew; 3 November 1947 – 26 March 2020) was an English palaeontologist and evolutionary biologist.She specialised in the early evolution of tetrapods, specifically studying the "fish to tetrapod" transition: the origin, evolutionary development and radiation of early tetrapods and their relatives among the lobe-finned fishes.
Tetrapodomorpha (also known as Choanata [3]) is a clade of vertebrates consisting of tetrapods (four-limbed vertebrates) and their closest sarcopterygian relatives that are more closely related to living tetrapods than to living lungfish.
Acanthostega (meaning "spiny roof") is an extinct genus of stem-tetrapod, among the first vertebrate animals to have recognizable limbs.It appeared in the late Devonian period (Famennian age) about 365 million years ago, and was anatomically intermediate between lobe-finned fishes and those that were fully capable of coming onto land.
In the early to mid 20th century, a biphyletic origin of amphibians (and thus of tetrapods in general) was favoured. [ 12 ] [ 13 ] In the late 20th century, a flood of new fossil evidence mapped out in some detail the nature of the transition between the elpistostegalid fish and the early amphibians . [ 14 ]