ArticleNature2016
Life history of the stem tetrapod Acanthostega revealed by synchrotron microtomography.
Article in Nature, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 papers.
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Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 47 citations in OpenAlex.
- Investigating a Devonian vertebrate assemblage with synchrotron microtomography of coprolites.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Using salamanders as model taxa to understand vertebrate feeding constraints during the late Devonian water-to-land transition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- High-energy synchrotron-radiation-based X-ray micro-tomography enables non-destructive and micro-scale palaeohistological assessment of macro-scale fossil dinosaur bones.Journal of synchrotron radiation · 2023Article
- Fossil bone histology reveals ancient origins for rapid juvenile growth in tetrapods.Communications biology · 2022Article
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- Life history and ossification patterns inPeerJ · 2022Article
- Osteohistology of Greererpeton provides insight into the life history of an early Carboniferous tetrapod.Journal of anatomy · 2021Review
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- Evolution of forelimb musculoskeletal function across the fish-to-tetrapod transition.Science advances · 2021Article
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- Quantifying intracortical bone microstructure: A critical appraisal of 2D and 3D approaches for assessing vascular canals and osteocyte lacunae.Journal of anatomy · 2020Article
- Mandibular musculature constrains brain-endocast disparity between sarcopterygians.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- The smallest known Devonian tetrapod shows unexpectedly derived features.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- Early tetrapods had an eye on the land.Nature · 2019Article
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- Two types of bone necrosis in the Middle TriassicRoyal Society open science · 2017Article
- Synchrotron phase-contrast microtomography of coprolites generates novel palaeobiological data.Scientific reports · 2017Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 4 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The transition from fish to tetrapod was arguably the most radical series of adaptive shifts in vertebrate evolutionary history. Data are accumulating rapidly for most aspects of these events, but the life histories of the earliest tetrapods remain completely unknown, leaving a major gap in our understanding of these organisms as living animals. Symptomatic of this problem is the unspoken assumption that the largest known Devonian tetrapod fossils represent adult individuals. Here we present the first, to our knowledge, life history data for a Devonian tetrapod, from the Acanthostega mass-death deposit of Stensiö Bjerg, East Greenland. Using propagation phase-contrast synchrotron microtomography (PPC-SRμCT) to visualize the histology of humeri (upper arm bones) and infer their growth histories, we show that even the largest individuals from this deposit are juveniles. A long early juvenile stage with unossified limb bones, during which individuals grew to almost final size, was followed by a slow-growing late juvenile stage with ossified limbs that lasted for at least six years in some individuals. The late onset of limb ossification suggests that the juveniles were exclusively aquatic, and the predominance of juveniles in the sample suggests segregated distributions of juveniles and adults at least at certain times. The absolute size at which limb ossification began differs greatly between individuals, suggesting the possibility of sexual dimorphism, adaptive strategies or competition-related size variation.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.