Broomistega putterilli
Name: Broomistega putterilli [Putterill's Plate honoring Broom]
When: Early Triassic Period, about 249 million years ago
Where: Various sites in South Africa.
Claim to fame: Broomistega is mostly famous for one of its members' being part of the Triassic Odd-Couple - an unusual pairing of the cynodont proto-mammal Thrinaxodon and the small amphibian, Broomistega, whose bodies were fossilized inside the same burrow.
Broomistega was a proper amphibian, more closely related to living amphibians than to any other living creature, but it wasn't very closely related. It was a stereospondyl, a group that most paleontologists think has no living descendants (although a minority view holds that caecilians, burrowing worm-like amphibians, might be living stereospondyls.) During the Triassic, the stereospondyls included some of the largest amphibians ever to live, like Mastodonsaurus. Broomistega, in contrast was of modest size.
Broomistega and other stereospondyls are thought to have been mostly aquatic, maybe retaining gills through adulthood. Nevertheless, its presence in the burrow of the terrestrial Thrinaxodon demonstrates that it could spend considerable time on land. Alas, its anatomy is difficult to interpret for this issue. The notches at the rear margin of its skull might have housed proper ear-drums, or they may have retained their ancestral function as spiracles - accessory breathing openings.
- Pardo, J. D., Small, B. J., Huttenlocker, A. K. 2016. A caecilian-like temnospondyl from the Triassic Chinle Formation of Colorado and its bearing on the origins of Lissamphibia. Presentation at 76th Annual Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meetings.
- Pardo, J. D., Small, B. J., Huttenlocker, A. K. 2017. Stem caecilian from the Triassic of Colorado sheds light on the origins of Lissamphibia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (27).
- Florian Witzmann. 2015. CO2-metabolism in early tetrapods revisited: inferences from osteological correlates of gills, skin and lung ventilation in the fossil record. Lethaia 49(4), 492–506.
- Pardo, J. D., Small, B. J., Huttenlocker, A. K. 2017. Stem caecilian from the Triassic of Colorado sheds light on the origins of Lissamphibia. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (27).