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- Title
Thermal physiology and the origin of terrestriality in vertebrates.
- Authors
CARROLL, ROBERT L.; IRWIN, JASON; GREEN, DAVID M.
- Abstract
The adaptive reasons for the evolutionary transition between obligatorily aquatic lobe-finned fish and facultatively terrestrial early tetrapods have long been debated. The oldest adequately known amphibians,AcanthostegaandIchthyostega, from the final stage in the Upper Devonian (Famennian), can be clearly distinguished from the most advanced choanate sarcopterygian fish from the next older stage (Frasnian) by the presence of large pectoral and pelvic girdles, limbs generally resembling those of later Palaeozoic land vertebrates, and the absence of bones linking the back of the skull with the shoulder girdle. Upper Devonian and most Lower Carboniferous amphibians, like their aquatic predecessors, differed significantly from modern amphibians in their much larger size, up to a metre or more in length. Animals of this size, resembling modern crocodiles and the marine iguana, could have raised their body temperatures by basking in the sun and sustained them upon re-entry into the water. It is hypothesized that the physiological advantages of thermoregulation were a major selective force that resulted in the increasing capacity for the ancestors of tetrapods to move into shallow water, and later to support their bodies against the force of gravity and increase the size and locomotor capacities of the limbs. © 2005 The Linnean Society of London,Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2005,143, 345–358.
- Subjects
VERTEBRATES; CARBONIFEROUS stratigraphic geology; DEVONIAN stratigraphic geology; ICHTHYOSTEGA; ZOOLOGY
- Publication
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2005, Vol 143, Issue 3, p345
- ISSN
0024-4082
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/j.1096-3642.2005.00151.x