Evolution of four legged vertebrates and their derivatives
See also: Skeletal changes of vertebrates transitioning from water to land and Vertebrate land invasion
In Late Devonian vertebrate speciation, descendants of pelagic lobe-finned fish such as Eusthenopteron exhibited a sequence of adaptations: Panderichthys, suited to muddy shallows; Tiktaalik with limb-like fins that could take it onto land; early tetrapods in weed-filled swamps, such as Acanthostega, which had feet with eight digits, and Ichthyostega, which had limbs. Descendants also included pelagic lobe-finned fish such as coelacanth species.
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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. While most species today are terrestrial, little evidence supports the idea that any of the earliest tetrapods could move about on land, as their limbs could not have held their midsections off the ground and the known trackways do not indicate they dragged their bellies around. Presumably, the tracks were made by animals walking along the bottoms of shallow bodies of water.[2] The specific aquatic ancestors of the tetrapods, and the process by which land colonization occurred, remain unclear. They are areas of active research and debate among palaeontologists at present.
Most amphibians today remain semiaquatic, living the first stage of their lives as fish-like tadpoles. Several groups of tetrapods, such as the snakes and cetaceans, have lost some or all of their limbs. In addition, many tetrapods have returned to partially aquatic or fully aquatic lives throughout the history of the group (modern examples of fully aquatic tetrapods include cetaceans and sirenians). The first returns to an aquatic lifestyle may have occurred as early as the Carboniferous Period[3] whereas other returns occurred as recently as the Cenozoic, as in cetaceans, pinnipeds,[4] and several modern amphibians.[5]
The change from a body plan for breathing and navigating in water to a body plan enabling the animal to move on land is one of the most profound evolutionary changes known.[6] It is also one of the best understood, largely thanks to a number of significant transitional fossil finds in the late 20th century combined with improved phylogenetic analysis.[1]
^ abShubin, N. (2008). Your Inner Fish: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body. New York: Pantheon Books. ISBN 978-0-375-42447-2.
^Clack, Jennifer A. (1997). "Devonian tetrapod trackways and trackmakers; a review of the fossils and footprints" (PDF). Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 130 (1–4): 227–250. Bibcode:1997PPP...130..227C. doi:10.1016/S0031-0182(96)00142-3.
^Laurin, M. (2010). How Vertebrates Left the Water. Berkeley, California, USA.: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-26647-6.
^Canoville, Aurore; Laurin, Michel (2010). "Evolution of humeral microanatomy and lifestyle in amniotes, and some comments on paleobiological inferences". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. 100 (2): 384–406. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8312.2010.01431.x.
^Laurin, Michel; Canoville, Aurore; Quilhac, Alexandra (2009). "Use of paleontological and molecular data in supertrees for comparative studies: the example of lissamphibian femoral microanatomy". Journal of Anatomy. 215 (2): 110–123. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7580.2009.01104.x. PMC 2740958. PMID 19508493.
^Long JA, Gordon MS (2004). "The greatest step in vertebrate history: a paleobiological review of the fish-tetrapod transition". Physiol. Biochem. Zool. 77 (5): 700–19. doi:10.1086/425183. PMID 15547790. S2CID 1260442. Archived from the original on 2016-04-12. Retrieved 2014-03-09. as PDF Archived 2013-10-29 at the Wayback Machine
and 27 Related for: Evolution of tetrapods information
The evolutionoftetrapods began about 400 million years ago in the Devonian Period with the earliest tetrapods evolved from lobe-finned fishes. Tetrapods...
between lobe-finned fishes and true four-limbed tetrapods. Limbed vertebrates (tetrapods in the broad sense of the word) are first known from Middle Devonian...
is that elpistostegalian and tetrapod similarities are a case of convergent evolution. In this interpretation, tetrapods would originate in the Middle...
375 Ma, the first tetrapods evolved from fish. Fins evolved to become limbs that the first tetrapods used to lift their heads out of the water to breathe...
establishing themselves as terrestrial tetrapods in the succeeding Carboniferous. Amniotes branched from amphibious tetrapods early in the Carboniferous period...
pre-Devonian origin of fish, their Devonian radiation, including the conquest of land by early tetrapods, and the post-Devonian evolutionof fishes. The Devonian...
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the early evolutionoftetrapods, specifically studying the "fish to tetrapod" transition: the origin, evolutionary development and radiation of early tetrapods...
sequence of events involved in tetrapodevolution. In January 2010, a group of paleontologists published a paper which showed that the first tetrapods appeared...
article Chapter 6: "Walking with early tetrapods: evolutionof the postcranial skeleton and the phylogenetic affinities of the Temnospondyli (Vertebrata: Tetrapoda)...
half-tetrapods, in appearance and limb morphology. The Tetrapodomorpha contains the crown group tetrapods (the last common ancestor of living tetrapods and...
Transitional tetrapods first appeared during the early Devonian, and by the late Devonian the first tetrapods appeared. The diversity of jawed vertebrates...
Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes...
for hundreds of millions of years, they all originally descended from aquatic animals (see Evolutionoftetrapods). These ancestral tetrapods had never left...
clade of lobe-finned fishes which includes the tetrapods and lungfishes. Rhipidistia formerly referred to a subgroup of Sarcopterygii consisting of the...
seen in fish apparently being irrevocably lost very early in the evolutionoftetrapods. The branchial system is typically used for respiration and/or feeding...
meaning "smooth amphibians") is a group oftetrapods that includes all modern amphibians. Lissamphibians consist of three living groups: the Salientia (frogs...
large sharks, lungfish, and other lobe-finned fishes, and even tetrapods, because all tetrapods at this time still had to lay their eggs in water. Johanson...
February 2013. Jaws, Teeth of Earliest Bony Fish Discovered Clack, J.A. (2012). Gaining ground: the origin and evolutionoftetrapods (2nd ed.). Bloomington...
very early in the evolutionoftetrapods. Sharks and rays typically have five pairs of gill slits that open directly to the outside of the body, though...
modern phylogeny, the basalmost tetrapods are discerned from two derived branches, one consisting of the crown group of modern amphibians, the Lissamphibia...
and evolutionoftetrapods. Indiana University Press, 369 pp., ISBN 978-0-253-34054-2. Cloudsley-Thompson J. L. (1988). Evolution and adaptation of terrestrial...
interior of the mouth. In tetrapods that lack a secondary palate (basal tetrapods and amphibians), the choanae are located forward in the roof of the mouth...
venom evolution. The evolutionof venom is thought to be responsible for the enormous expansion of snakes across the globe. The evolutionary history of snake...
Ichthyostega is often labelled a 'tetrapod' because of its limbs and fingers, it evolved long before true crown group tetrapods and could more accurately be...
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