Royal Society Open Science
Published December 19, 2018 17:01 ET (Brief from the Royal Society)
Aïstopods are a highly specialized group of eel-like legless early tetrapods, four-legged vertebrates, and diverged from the tetrapod family tree early on. This study reports a jaw believed to belong to an aïstopod that lived some 310 million years ago – the early Carboniferous Period – near what is now Joggins, NS. The jaw preserves primitive characteristics not seen in more advanced aïstopods, providing more evidence these animals branched away early from tetrapods’ fin-to-limb transition.
Lead author: Jason Pardo, University of Calgary – jdpardo@ucalgary.ca
