Balanerpeton woodi

Balanerpeton is an extinct genus of temnospondyl from the Visean stage of the Early Carboniferous in Scotland. The genus contains a single species, Balanerpeton woodi, known from complete specimens discovered in the East Kirkton Quarry. It represents the earliest known definitive temnospondyl, a group of tetrapods that possibly may have given rise to amphibians, though whether modern amphibians truly descended from temnospondyls remains contentious among researchers.

Balanerpeton woodi

Jason D. Pardo, Kendra Lennie & Jason S. Anderson (2020) · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
BalanerpetonPBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Temnospondyli
Life habit
amphibiousPBDB, for Temnospondyli
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Temnospondyli
Environment
brackish,freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Tetrapoda

Time the record covers

At most 5.6 million years on record.

The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 335.9 Mya and 330.3 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.

Carboniferous — about 1 of 1 occurrenceCarboniferous336–336 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences336–336 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences336–335 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences335–335 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences335–335 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences335–335 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences335–334 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences334–334 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences334–334 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences334–334 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences334–334 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences334–333 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences333–333 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences333–333 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences333–333 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences333–332 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences332–332 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences332–332 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences332–332 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences332–332 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences332–331 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences331–331 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences331–331 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences331–331 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences331–330 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences330–330 Mya — about 0.0 occurrences336.4 Mya329.8 Mya

1 occurrence of Balanerpeton woodi on record, most of them in the Carboniferous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

1 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

1 formation

East Kirkton Limestone — 55.95°N, 3.20°W

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The named rock units Balanerpeton woodi has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Balanerpeton woodi and its relatives

Carboniferous

Where Balanerpeton woodi and its relatives were recorded in the Carboniferous.

Found in the same rock

9 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Balanerpeton woodi, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

1 reference

Each of the 1 occurrence read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Balanerpeton woodi

Credit
Jason D. Pardo, Kendra Lennie & Jason S. Anderson (2020)
Licence
CC BY 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Balanerpeton woodi was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itBalanerpeton through timeFormations of the CarboniferousThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Milner and Sequeira 1994