Edaphosauridae is a family of mostly large (up to 3 meters or more)

Late Carboniferous Late may refer to: * LATE, an acronym which could stand for: ** Limbic-predominant age-related TDP-43 encephalopathy, a proposed form of dementia ** Local-authority trading enterprise, a New Zealand business law ** Local average treatment effect, ...

Early Permian 01 or '01 may refer to: * The year 2001, or any year ending with 01 * The month of January * 1 (number) Music * '01 (Richard Müller album), 01'' (Richard Müller album), 2001 * 01 (Son of Dave album), ''01'' (Son of Dave album), 2000 * 01 (Urban ...

synapsid Synapsids + (, 'arch') > () "having a fused arch"; synonymous with ''theropsids'' (Greek, "beast-face") are one of the two major groups of animals that evolved from basal amniotes, the other being the sauropsids, the group that includes reptil ...

s. Edaphosaur fossils are so far known only from

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

and

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

Characteristics

They were the earliest known

herbivorous A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthpart ...

amniotes and, along with the

Diadectidae Diadectidae is an extinct family of early tetrapods that lived in what is now North America and Europe during the Late Carboniferous and Early Permian in Asia during the Late Permian. They were the first herbivorous tetrapods, and also the first ...

, the earliest known herbivorous

tetrapod Tetrapods (; ) are four-limbed vertebrate animals constituting the superclass Tetrapoda (). It includes extant and extinct amphibians, sauropsids ( reptiles, including dinosaurs and therefore birds) and synapsids (pelycosaurs, extinct theraps ...

s. The head is small in relation to the bulky body, and there is a tall sail along the back, which may have functioned as a

thermoregulatory Thermoregulation is the ability of an organism to keep its body temperature within certain boundaries, even when the surrounding temperature is very different. A thermoconforming organism, by contrast, simply adopts the surrounding temperature ...

device.

Classification

The interrelationships of Edaphosauridae was investigated in details by David M. Mazierski and Robert R. Reisz (2010). The

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to d ...

below is modified after their phylogenetic analysis. Below is a cladogram modified from the analysis of Benson (in press):

References

* Carroll, R. L. (1988), ''Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution'', WH Freeman & Co. * Reisz, R. R., 1986, ''Handbuch der Paläoherpetologie – Encyclopedia of Paleoherpetology, Part 17A Pelycosauria'' Verlag Dr. Friedrich Pfeil,

External links

Edaphosauridae
Pennsylvanian first appearances Taxa named by Edward Drinker Cope Prehistoric synapsid families {{paleo-synapsid-stub