Abstract
THE earliest tetrapod fauna yet discovered in the Southern Hemisphere comes from the Drummond basin of central Queensland, Australia. The fauna is of Early Carboniferous age (mid-Viséan, about 333 Myr ago1) and comprises at least three types of tetrapods in association with abundant freshwater fishes. Two of the tetrapods (a colosteid and, less certainly, a temnospondyl) are distantly related to living amphibians, whereas the third (an anthracosaur) is an early relative of the amniotes. All three tetrapods rank among the oldest known representatives of their clades, and two of them (colosteid and anthracosaur) represent groups previously confined to Europe and North America. By virtue of its geographic remoteness, early age, and taxonomic diversity, the Drummond basin fauna has important implications for current understanding of early tetrapod history2,3. Most significantly, it indicates that several major groups of tetrapods were distributed worldwide through equatorial regions during the Early Carboniferous.
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Thulborn, T., Warren, A., Turner, S. et al. Early Carboniferous tetrapods in Australia. Nature 381, 777–780 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1038/381777a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/381777a0
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