Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
This article contains a list of all of the classes and orders that are located in the Phylum Chordata. The subphyla Tunicata and Vertebrata are in the unranked Olfactores clade, while the subphylum Cephalochordata is not. Animals in Olfactores are characterized as having a more advanced olfactory system than animals not in it.
Chordate fossils have been found from as early as the Cambrian explosion over 539 million years ago. [11] Of the more than 81,000 [ 12 ] living species of chordates, about half are ray-finned fishes ( class Actinopterygii ) and the vast majority of the rest are tetrapods , a terrestrial clade of lobe-finned fishes ( Sarcopterygii ) who evolved ...
In effect, "tetrapod" is a name reserved solely for animals which lie among living tetrapods, so-called crown tetrapods. This is a node-based clade , a group with a common ancestry descended from a single "node" (the node being the nearest common ancestor of living species).
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.
Chordata: Order: † Chroniosuchia ... Jiyuanitectum; Synesuchus; Bystrowianidae is a family of chroniosuchian tetrapods from the Permian and Triassic periods. [1 ...
Agnatha (/ ˈ æ ɡ n ə θ ə, æ ɡ ˈ n eɪ θ ə /; [3] from Ancient Greek ἀ-(a-) 'without' and γνάθος (gnáthos) 'jaws') is a paraphyletic infraphylum [4] of non-gnathostome vertebrates, or jawless fish, in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, consisting of both living (cyclostomes) and extinct (conodonts, anaspids, and ostracoderms, among others).
The group of lobe-finned fishes that were the ancestors of the tetrapod are grouped together as the Rhipidistia, [60] and the first tetrapods evolved from these fish over the relatively short timespan 385–360 Ma. The early tetrapod groups themselves are grouped as Labyrinthodontia.
The tetrapods evolved from the lobe-finned fishes about 395 million years ago in the Devonian. [23] The specific aquatic ancestors of the tetrapods, and the process by which land colonization occurred, remain unclear, and are areas of active research and debate among palaeontologists at present.