Tulerpeton

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Tulerpeton
Tulerpeton12DB.jpg

Tulerpeton

Temporal occurrence
Famennium (Upper Devonian)
372.2 to 358.9 million years
Locations
Systematics
Vertebrates (vertebrata)
Land vertebrates (Tetrapoda)
Tulerpeton
Scientific name
Tulerpeton
Lebedev , 1984

Tulerpeton was one of the first amphibian-like , primitive land vertebrates and comes from the Famennium (Upper Devonian). Its fossil remains were found in Russia in the Tula region. They consist of a shoulder girdle , the front and rear legs, and parts of the skull ( premaxillary , vomer ) and are therefore more complete than in most other Devonian land vertebrates, but not as extensive as in Acanthostega and Ichthyostega . There is only one valid species, the Tulerpeton curtum .

features

Tulerpeton's shoulder girdle is more robust than Acanthostega's . He had six long and slender toes each on his fore and hind legs ( Acanthostega had eight, Ichthyostega seven). Maybe he lived more terrestrially than his relatives. However, his ankle joint and the muscle attachment points on the thigh bone show that he was even more adapted to swimming than to running locomotion. Because of the apparent lack of a gill skeleton, it is believed that Tulerpeton had no internal gills and was air-breathing, while the other tribe-group tetrapods were still gill-breathers. The anocleithrum (a bone of the upper chest) is still present in Tulerpeton and Acanthostega , but has been lost in Ichthyostega and Hynerpeton .

Because of the anatomy of the humerus , Tulerpeton is regarded by Coates and Lebedev as a representative of the amniote tribe group and a division of the tetrapod tree into a batrachomorphic line ( running to the amphibians ) and a reptiliomorphic line ( running to the reptiles ) is suspected before the Devonian / Carboniferous line . Benton and Laurin see him as a core group representative of the Tetrapoda. The reduction of the number of toes to five would otherwise have had to be done twice independently of each other.

The Tulerpeton fossil was found in marine deposits. It may be that he was a sea creature or was able to stay in salt water for a while, e.g. B. to cross inlets.

literature

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