Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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).
Although several other groups of early tetrapods independently acquired herbivory, diadectids were the only Carboniferous tetrapods that were able to process high-fiber terrestrial plants. Diadectids were also the most diverse group of herbivores, representing the first radiation of plant-eating tetrapods. [1]
The oldest known example being Desmatodon hesperis. [15] Early tetrapods were large amphibious piscivores. While amphibians continued to feed on fish and insects, some reptiles began exploring two new food types, tetrapods (carnivory) and plants (herbivory). The entire dinosaur order ornithischia was composed of herbivorous dinosaurs. [14]
Herbivory is of extreme ecological importance and prevalence among insects.Perhaps one third (or 500,000) of all described species are herbivores. [4] Herbivorous insects are by far the most important animal pollinators, and constitute significant prey items for predatory animals, as well as acting as major parasites and predators of plants; parasitic species often induce the formation of galls.
The sale of animal by-products allows the meat industry to compete economically with industries selling sources of vegetable protein. [5] The word animals includes all species in the biological kingdom Animalia, including, for example, tetrapods, arthropods, and mollusks.
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 ...
Suborder Charadrii (plover-like waders). Family Charadriidae (plovers and lapwings); Family Haematopodidae (oystercatchers); Family Ibidorhynchidae (ibisbill); Family Recurvirostridae (avocets and stilts)
Lepospondyl and tetrapod classification is still controversial, and even recent studies have had doubts about lepospondyl monophyly. For example, a 2007 paper has suggested that adelospondyls are stem-tetrapods close to colosteids [3] and a 2017 paper on Lethiscus has Aïstopoda in the tetrapod stem based on their primitive braincase. [18]