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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.
The oldest near-complete tetrapod fossils, Acanthostega and Ichthyostega, date from the second half of the Fammennian. [56] [57] Although both were essentially four-footed fish, Ichthyostega is the earliest known tetrapod that may have had the ability to pull itself onto land and drag itself forward with its forelimbs. There is no evidence that ...
Tuditanidae is an extinct family of microsaurian tetrapods. Fossils have been found from Nova Scotia, Ohio, and the Czech Republic and are Late Carboniferous in age. [1] Tuditanids were medium-sized terrestrial microsaurs that resembled lizards.
The first tetrapods appeared in the fossil record over a period, the beginning and end of which are marked with extinction events. This lasted until the end of the Devonian 359 mya. The ancestors of all tetrapods began adapting to walking on land, their strong pectoral and pelvic fins gradually evolved into legs (see Tiktaalik). [38]
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 ...
A paleontologist hailed the discovery as "truly an unusual find," adding it helped explain the relationships in the prehistoric food chain.
Colosteidae is a family of stegocephalians (stem-group tetrapods) that lived in the Carboniferous period. [1] They possessed a variety of characteristics from different tetrapod or stem-tetrapod groups, which made them historically difficult to classify.
Colosteus is an extinct genus of colosteid tetrapod from the Late Carboniferous (late Westphalian stage) of Ohio.Its remains have been found at the Linton site in Saline Township, Ohio, where it is one of the most common tetrapods, [1] and at the Five Points site in Mahoning County, Ohio. [2]