By: Jennifer A. Clack, Alain Beneteau (Illustrator)

Hardcover

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Around 370 million years ago, a distant relative of a modern lungfish began a most extraordinary adventure -- emerging from the water and laying claim to the land. Over the next 70 million years, this tentative beachhead had developed into a worldwide colonization by ever-increasing varieties of four-limbed creatures know as tetrapods, the ancestors of all vertebrate life on land. This new edition of Jennifer A. Clack's groundbreaking book tells the complex story of their emergence and evolution. Beginning with their closest relatives, the lobe-fin fishes such as lungfishes and coelacanths, Clack defines what a tetrapod is, describes their anatomy, and explains how they are related to other vertebrates. She looks at the Devonian environment in which they evolved, describes the known and newly discovered species, and explores the order and timing of anatomical changes that occurred during the fish-to-tetrapod transition.

"This outstanding update of early tetrapod anatomy, phylogeny and systematics... will be extremely useful to students and lecturers in palaeontology, geology, zoology and general biology [and] a 'must' for researchers in the field." Nature "A landmark review of some of the most important discoveries in vertebrate biology and evolution during the close of the past century." PALAIOS "A wonderful tale encrypted in fossils, genes, and flesh." Carl Zimmer, author of At the Water's Edge

Preface; Acknowledgments One Introduction; Two Skulls and Skeletons in Transition; Three Relationships and Relatives: The Lobe-Fin Family; Four Setting the Scene: The Devonian World; Five The First Feet: Tetrapods of the Famennian; Six From Fins to Feet: Transformation and Transition; Seven Emerging into the Carboniferous: The First Phase; Eight East Kirkton and the Roots of the Modern Family Tree; Nine The Late Carboniferous: Expanding Horizons; Ten Gaining Ground: The Evolution of Terrestriality References; Index

ISBN: 9780253356758
ISBN-10: 025335675X
Series: Life of the Past
Audience: Tertiary; University or College
Format: Hardcover
Language: English
Number Of Pages: 496
Published: 1st March 2012
Dimensions (cm): 25.7 x 18.8  x 4.3
Weight (kg): 1.315