Clément Gaël, Ahlberg Per E, Blieck Alain, Blom Henning, Clack Jennifer A, Poty Edouard, Thorez Jacques, Janvier Philippe
UMR 5143, CNRS, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, 75005 Paris, France.
Nature. 2004 Jan 29;427(6973):412-3. doi: 10.1038/427412a.
Several discoveries of Late Devonian tetrapods (limbed vertebrates) have been made during the past two decades, but each has been confined to one locality. Here we describe a tetrapod jaw of about 365 million years (Myr) old from the Famennian of Belgium, which is the first from western continental Europe. The jaw closely resembles that of Ichthyostega, a Famennian tetrapod hitherto known only from Greenland. The environment of this fossil provides information about the conditions that prevailed just before the virtual disappearance of tetrapods from the fossil record for 20 Myr.
在过去二十年里,人们发现了几种泥盆纪晚期的四足动物(有肢脊椎动物),但每一种都局限于一个地点。在这里,我们描述了一个来自比利时法门阶、约有3.65亿年历史的四足动物颌骨,这是西欧大陆的首个此类发现。该颌骨与鱼石螈的颌骨极为相似,鱼石螈是一种迄今仅在格陵兰岛发现过的法门阶四足动物。这块化石所处的环境提供了有关在四足动物从化石记录中实际消失2000万年之前盛行的条件的信息。