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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 fish-like early labyrinthodont that occupied swamps and changed views about the early evolution of tetrapods. [61] It had eight digits on each hand (the number of digits on the feet is unclear) linked by webbing, it lacked wrists, and was generally poorly adapted to come onto land. [ 78 ]
A notable characteristic that make a tetrapod's skull different from a fish's are the relative frontal and rear portion lengths. The fish had a long rear portion while the front was short; the orbital vacuities were thus located towards the anterior end. In the tetrapod, the front of the skull lengthened, positioning the orbits farther back on ...
Acanthostega is a partially aquatic tetrapod with developed limbs that shares features common with the earlier tetrapods, Panderichthys and Eusthenopteron. [3] Like Panderichthys , the humerus of Acanthostega is flattened dorso-ventrally, the intermedium terminates level with the radius, and the endoskeleton can be divided into stylopodium ...
The Devonian period (419–359 Mya), also known as the Age of Fishes, saw the development of early sharks, armoured placoderms and various lobe-finned fish, including the tetrapod transitional species. The evolution of fish began about 530 million years ago during the Cambrian explosion.
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.
Homoplasy (convergent evolution) is considered responsible for several supposedly unique tetrapod features which are also found in non-elpistostegalian Paleozoic fish. The lobe-finned rhizodont Sauripterus has finger-like jointed distal radial bones, [26] [27] while the actinopterygian Tarrasius has a tetrapod-like spinal column with 5 axial ...
In Late Devonian vertebrate speciation, descendants of pelagic lobe-finned fish—like Eusthenopteron—exhibited a sequence of adaptations: * Panderichthys, suited to muddy shallows; * Tiktaalik with limb-like fins that could take it onto land; * Early tetrapods in weed-filled swamps, such as: * Acanthostega which had feet with eight digits ...