Suminia
| Suminia | ||||||||||||
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Suminia getmanovi |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Perm | ||||||||||||
| 260 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Suminia | ||||||||||||
| Ivachnenko , 1994 |
Suminia was a Therapside (formerly called mammal-like reptile) who lived in the late Permian , 260 million years ago. Fossils of the animal, including a plate with the remains of 15 specimens, were found in Kirov Oblast near the Vyatka Riverin Russia. The onlyspecies described is Suminia getmanovi .
features
Suminia was about half a meter long, of which the head and trunk took up 30 cm, the tail 20 cm. The postcranial skeleton (the area of the skeleton following the skull) shows an adaptation to a tree-dwelling way of life with a long neck, unusually wide cervical vertebrae, an enlarged shoulder blade , elongated, graspable limbs and a long tail. This makes Suminia the oldest tree-dwelling terrestrial vertebrate that has been found to date. The forefoot has the phalangeal formula 2-3-4-5-3, the rear foot 2-3-4-5-4. The phalanges of the fingers and toes are laterally flattened and strongly curved.
Suminia had large eyes and strong, leaf-shaped teeth to adapt to the herbivorous diet.
Systematics
Suminia belongs to the Anomodontia , an extinct group of non-mammalian synapsids from the Permian and Triassic , which were the dominant herbivores among all terrestrial vertebrates during the late Permian.
literature
- Jörg Fröbisch & Robert R. Reisz: The Late Permian herbivore Suminia and the early evolution of arboreality in terrestrial vertebrate ecosystems. Proc. R. Soc. B, 276, pp. 3611-3618, 2009 doi : 10.1098 / rspb.2009.0911
- Natalia Rybczynski: Cranial anatomy and phylogenetic position of Suminia getmanovi, a basal anomodont (Amniota: Therapsida) from the Late Permian of Eastern Europe. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 130, pp. 329-373, 2000 doi : 10.1111 / j.1096-3642.2000.tb01634.x
Web links
- University of Toronto: Earliest efficient chewing herbivore ever found spurred animal life on land ( Memento from April 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
- Spektrum.de Early climbers
- The fossil skull of Suminia getmanovi