Pederpes | 3D Dinopedia

Pederpes

Period of life:

348–347.6 million years

Period:

Carboniferous period

Habitat:

Freshwater environment

Taxonomy:

Amphibians

Height:

0.2 m

Countries:

Carboniferous period Pederpes | 3D Dinopedia

Pederpes (348–347.6 million years)

What the name means: "Peder's foot," in honor of Peder Aspen, a paleontologist who discovered the specimen.

Pederpes (Pederpes) is not just an extinct genus of tetrapods that lived at the beginning of the Carboniferous period (Carbon) about 348 million years ago. This creature is a real key to unlocking one of the greatest mysteries of evolution: how exactly fish emerged onto land and transformed into terrestrial animals.

For a long time, paleontologists puzzled over the "Romer's gap" - a 20-million-year gap in the fossil record between the late Devonian tetrapodomorph fish, such as Ichthyostega and Acanthostega, and the first true tetrapods of the early Carbon. And the fossils of Pederpes discovered in Scotland in 1971, like a missing puzzle piece, filled this gap!

Pederpes was a relatively small animal, about a meter in length, with a massive skull filled with sharp teeth. Interestingly, the lateral line grooves, characteristic of fish, in Pederpes were embedded in the bone, like in lobe-finned fish. This suggests that it likely spent a lot of time in water. However, the structure of Pederpes's five-fingered limbs already resembled the limbs of later terrestrial tetrapods. Unlike its Devonian predecessors, Pederpes had real and quite sturdy legs, allowing it to move on land, albeit clumsily. Essentially, this is the first of the known animals with real legs and… a good example of what the distant ancestors of terrestrial tetrapods might have looked like!

Despite Pederpes shedding light on the evolution of tetrapods, it still holds many mysteries. For example, its exact place on the evolutionary tree is still debated.

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