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Other factors that caused aquatic tetrapods to spend more time on land caused the development of terrestrial hearing with the development of a tympanum within an otic notch and developed by convergent evolution at least three times. [10] There was also a change in the dermal bones of the skull in the aquatic tetrapods. [5]
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.
[14] [15] In order to study the genes involved in limb development (and thus evolution), limb reduction and limb loss in snakes is a complementary approach. [16] Conserved sequences involved in limb development are retained in the genomes of snakes.
The distalmost portion or extremity of the limb, i.e. the hand or foot, is known as the autopodium (plural: autopodia). Hands are technically known as the manus , and feet as the pes . The proximal part of the autopodium, i.e. the wrist or ankle region, has many small nodular bones, collectively termed the mesopodium (plural: mesopodia ).
Polydactyly in early tetrapod aquatic animals, such as in Acanthostega gunnari (Jarvik 1952), one of an increasing number of genera of stem-tetrapods known from the Upper Devonian, which are providing insights into the appearance of tetrapods and the origin of limbs with digits. It also occurs secondarily in some later tetrapods, such as ...
In typical early tetrapod posture, the upper arm and upper leg extended nearly straight horizontal from its body, and the forearm and the lower leg extended downward from the upper segment at a near right angle. The body weight was not centered over the limbs, but was rather transferred 90 degrees outward and down through the lower limbs, which ...
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.
Limb evolution in Devonian tetrapodomorphs from pectoral fins to forelimbs. From left to right: Eusthenopteron , Panderichthys , Tiktaalik , Elpistostege , Acanthostega Polydactyly in stem-tetrapods should here be understood as having more than five digits to the finger or foot, a condition that was the natural state of affairs in the earliest ...