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Carboniferous is the period during which both terrestrial animal and land plant life was well established. [10] Stegocephalia (four-limbed vertebrates including true tetrapods), whose forerunners (tetrapodomorphs) had evolved from lobe-finned fish during the preceding Devonian period, became pentadactylous during the Carboniferous. [11]
The origin of the reptiles lies about 320–310 million years ago, in the swamps of the late Carboniferous period, when the first reptiles evolved from advanced labyrinthodonts. [2] The oldest known animal that may have been an amniote , a reptile rather than an amphibian , is Casineria [ 3 ] [ 4 ] (though it has also been argued to be a ...
Carboniferous tetrapods include amphibians and reptiles that lived during the Carboniferous Period. 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.
Other Carboniferous genera aare Bobbodus, Campodus, and Ornithoprion. Eugeneodontids were common during the Carboniferous period. Members of this order typically had tooth whorls, mostly formed by their lower jaws. In Edestus, both the upper and lower jaws formed a tooth whorl. Some species of Edestus could reach body lengths of 6.7 m (22 ft).
The group's origins lie within an arachnid sub-group defined by the presence of book lungs (the tetrapulmonates); [1] [2] the arachnids as a whole evolved from aquatic chelicerate ancestors. More than 45,000 extant species have been described, organised taxonomically in 3,958 genera and 114 families. [3] There may be more than 120,000 species. [3]
Amniotes evolved from amphibious stem tetrapod ancestors during the Carboniferous period. Amniota is defined as the smallest crown clade containing humans, the Greek tortoise, and the Nile crocodile. [4] [5]
The age of the dinosaurs never really ended—it only evolved. Birds (and their more reptilian cousins, the Crocodilia ) are the modern-day legacy of dinosaur’s 165-million-year-long stint on Earth.
The Devonian period (395 to 345 Mya) brought in such giants as the placoderm Dunkleosteus, which could grow up to seven meters long, and early air-breathing fish that could remain on land for extended periods. Among this latter group were ancestral amphibians. The reptiles appeared from labyrinthodonts in the subsequent Carboniferous period.