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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 tetrapod tongue is built from muscles that once controlled gill openings. The tongue is anchored to the hyoid bone, which was once the lower half of a pair of gill bars (the second pair after the ones that evolved into jaws). [89] [90] [91] The tongue did not evolve until the gills began to disappear.
Work by Niedźwiedzki et al., particularly analyzing the trackways from Poland, interprets some of the tracks as being dominated by only two limbs. [4] This "ladder-like" pattern produces symmetric trackways that imply that one set of limbs is dominating the motion with the other limbs either not supporting as much weight or not being used at ...
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]
Tetrapods (animals with four limbs) 395 Amniota: Amniotes (fully terrestrial tetrapods whose eggs are "equipped with an amnion") 340 Synapsida: Proto-Mammals 308 Therapsid: Limbs beneath the body and other mammalian traits 280 Class: Mammalia: Mammals: 220 Subclass: Theria: Mammals that give birth to live young (i.e. non-egg-laying) 160 ...
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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 ...
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.