Gaining Ground - The Origin And Evolution Of Tetrapods - Clack Jennifer-A

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Résumé :
Around 370 million years ago, a distant relative of a modern lungfish began a most extraordinary adventure: It emerged from the sea and laid claim to the land. Over the next 70 million years, this tentative beachhead became a worldwide colonization by an ever-increasing variety of four-limbed life. These first "tetrapods" are the ancestors of ail vertebrate life on land. This book tells the rich and complex story of their emergence and evolution. Beginning with their closest relatives, the lobe-fin fishes such as lungfishes and coelacanths, Jennifer A. 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 species, and explores the order and timing of anatomical changes that occurred during the fish-to-tetrapod transition. Clack explains how older ideas about the transition are being overturned by recent discoveries and new ideas about evolutionary change. Following the story through the Carboniferous period, she shows how the evolution of terrestrial characters occurred several times, convergently, among different groups.

Biographie:
JENNIFER A. CLACK is Reader in Vertebrate Palaeontology and Senior Assistant Curator, University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, and author of numerous papers on Devonian and Carboniferous life. A shorter version of Gaining Ground was published in Japanese in 2000.

Sommaire:
["Skulls and skeletons in transition","Relationships and relatives: the lobe-fin family","Setting the scene: the Devonian world","The first feet: tetrapods of the famennian","From fins to feet: transformation and transition","Emerging into the carboniferous: the first phase","East kirkton and the roots of the modern family tree","The late carboniferous: expanding horizons","Gaining ground: the evolution of terrestriality"]