2018/06/07 by Robert W. Gess, Per Ahlberg · 2 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Biology #Carboniferous #Devonian #Ecology #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Fauna #Geology #Gondwana #Ichthyology and Marine Biology #Late Devonian extinction #Paleontology #Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology #Permian #Supercontinent #Tetrapod (structure)
paper · doi:10.1126/science.aaq1645
openalex publication_date 2018/06/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31
) from the Devonian period have come from localities in tropical to subtropical paleolatitudes. Most are from Laurussia, a continent incorporating Europe, Greenland, and North America, with only one body fossil and one footprint locality from Australia representing the southern supercontinent Gondwana. Here we describe two previously unknown tetrapods from the Late Devonian (late Famennian) Gondwana locality of Waterloo Farm in South Africa, then located within the Antarctic Circle, which demonstrate that Devonian tetrapods were not restricted to warm environments and suggest that they may have been global in distribution.