The fossil animals we study are for the most part tetrapods (limbed vertebrates, such as amphibians and reptiles) that lived more than 200 million years ago during the Carboniferous and Permian Periods. Although some of these creatures can be identified as remote ancestors of animals living today, they differed greatly from their modern descendants in appearance and presumably in behaviour as well. The "pelycosaurs", for instance, were recognisably related to living mammals - but were also sprawling, lizardlike animals, some with grotesque and unusual features such as the enormous sail that rose from the back of certain genera. While we have to admit that the pelycosaurs and other members of the Permian and Carboniferous fauna were no match for Apatosaurus or Tyrannosaurus rex in terms of sheer size, they were certainly as strange and interesting as any of the dinosaurs, and offer at least as many puzzles to the beleaguered scientists who arrived on the scene hundreds of millions of years too late to study them properly.
The most fundamental of these puzzles is the ongoing effort to improve our understanding of the anatomy and evolutionary history of Permian and Carboniferous tetrapods; the identity of the immediate ancestors of turtles is a particularly contentious problem at the moment. Aside from this basic - but critical - sort of work, we also delve into more biological and ecological topics such as the origins of herbivory in vertebrates and the rather puzzling geographical distribution of vertebrate faunas during Permian time. If any of this sounds interesting, follow the links below for more information:
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