List of Carboniferous tetrapods

Carboniferous tetrapods include amphibians and reptiles that lived during the Carboniferous Period. Though stem-tetrapods originated in the preceding Devonian, it was in the earliest Carboniferous that the first crown tetrapods appeared, with full scaleless skin and five digits.

During this time, amphibians (including many extinct groups unrelated to modern forms, referred to as "basal tetrapods") were the predominant tetrapods, and included the Temnospondyli, Lepospondyli, and Anthracosauria. The first amniotes appeared during the middle Carboniferous (Early Pennsylvanian) from the lattermost group, and included both sauropsids and synapsids, but it was not until the very end of the Carboniferous, during a rainforest collapse, and afterwards that they began to diversify.

Classification

The following list of families of Carboniferous tetrapods is based mostly on Benton ed. 1993. The classification follows Benton 2004:

Superclass Tetrapoda

Series Amniota

See also

References
    • Benton, M. J. (2004), Vertebrate Paleontology, 3rd ed. Blackwell Science Ltd
    • ----- (editor), (1993) The fossil record II. London: Chapman and Hall.
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