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Palaeogeography

Devonian tetrapod from western Europe

Nature volume 427, pages 412–413 (2004)Cite this article

Abstract

Several discoveries of Late Devonian tetrapods (limbed vertebrates) have been made during the past two decades1,2,3, 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.

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Figure 1: Lower jaw of a Late Devonian (Famennian) ichthyostegid tetrapod from Belgium (Liège University palaeontology collection, 6106a).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR 5143, CNRS, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, 75005, France

    Gaël Clément & Philippe Janvier

  2. Department of Evolutionary Organismal Biology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, 752 36, Sweden

    Per E. Ahlberg

  3. UMR 8014, CNRS, USTL Sciences de la Terre, Villeneuve d'Ascq, 59655, Cedex, France

    Alain Blieck

  4. University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EJ, UK

    Henning Blom & Jennifer A. Clack

  5. Département de Géologie, Université de Liège, Sart-Tilman, Liège, 1, 4000, Belgium

    Edouard Poty & Jacques Thorez

  6. The Natural History Museum, London, SW7 5BD, UK

    Philippe Janvier

Authors
  1. Gaël Clément
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  2. Per E. Ahlberg
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  3. Alain Blieck
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  4. Henning Blom
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  5. Jennifer A. Clack
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  6. Edouard Poty
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  7. Jacques Thorez
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  8. Philippe Janvier
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Clément, G., Ahlberg, P., Blieck, A. et al. Devonian tetrapod from western Europe. Nature 427, 412–413 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/427412a

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