Anthracosauria

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Anthracosauria
Anthracosaurus from the late Carboniferous in a living reconstruction

Anthracosaurus from the late Carboniferous in a living reconstruction

Temporal occurrence
Carbon to lower perm
326.4 to 272.5 million years
Locations
  • Europe, North America
Systematics
Chordates (chordata)
Vertebrates (vertebrata)
Land vertebrates (Tetrapoda)
Reptiliomorpha
Anthracosauria
Scientific name
Anthracosauria
Säve-Söderbergh , 1934

The Anthracosauria are an extinct group of terrestrial vertebrates (Tetrapoda) that lived mainly aquatic , but also terrestrial in the swamps of Europe and North America in the late Paleozoic . Their main diet was probably fish.

features

They were elongated animals that were about one to two meters long. Her legs were slender, and the tail was designed as a rowing tail to adapt to her way of life. The skull was massive and had strong teeth, but had a weak zone between the roof of the skull and the cheek, which possibly allowed the skull to move while biting down. The roof of the skull and the skull were connected. The palate was largely closed and covered with strong fangs and many denticles . An indentation on the back of the cheek may have had an eardrum . The vertebrae consisted of two vertebral bodies of equal size, the pleurocentra and the intercentra. Both were in the shape of large, heavily ossified discs. The animals had five toes ( phalangeal formula 2-3-4-5-3).

Systematics

The anthracosauria are close to the origin of the amniotes and are united with the reptiles in the taxon Reptiliomorpha . They are now considered paraphyletic . Within the Anthracosauria two sub-taxa are distinguished, the Embolomeri , which lived aquatic and the Gephyrostegida , which were probably more land-dwelling. The Gephyrostegida resembled the first reptiles. They were relatively small with relatively long extremities and never had more than 24 trunk vertebrae, the embolomeri had up to 40.

Some scientists use the term anthracosauria completely differently, defining them as amniotes and all other extinct terrestrial vertebrates that are more closely related to the amniotes than to the amphibians.

literature

Individual proof

  1. ↑ Michel Laurin, Marc Girondot & Armand de Ricqlès: Early tetrapod evolution. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Volume 15, Issue 3, 1 March 2000, pages 118-123 doi : 10.1016 / S0169-5347 (99) 01780-2

Web links

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