First Devonian tetrapod from Asia

Min Zhu (), Per E. Ahlberg, Wenjin Zhao and Liantao Jia
Additional contact information
Min Zhu: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Per E. Ahlberg: Natural History Museum
Wenjin Zhao: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Liantao Jia: Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Nature, 2002, vol. 420, issue 6917, 760-761

Abstract: Abstract The earliest tetrapods (vertebrates with limbs rather than paired fins) date from the Late Devonian Period (370–354 million years ago)1,2 — nine genera have been described, all of which are from the Euramerican supercontinent that comprises Europe, north America and Greenland, apart from a single Gondwanan genus, Metaxygnathus, from Australia3,4,5. Here we report the discovery of the first Devonian tetrapod from Asia, a finding that substantially extends the geographical range of these animals and raises new questions about their dispersal. These forms seem to have achieved worldwide distribution and great taxonomic diversity within a relatively short time.

Date: 2002
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/420760a Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:420:y:2002:i:6917:d:10.1038_420760a

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/420760a

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().