Acanthostega is bounded here by described limb material from Famennian Upper Devonian deposits of East Greenland; this bounded sample context is not a global distribution or exact complete range.
claim:taxon:acanthostegaAcanthostega
A Devonian tetrapod represented by East Greenland limb material that documents an eight-digit forelimb and preserves the distinction between digit-bearing limbs and evidence for terrestrial walking.
Represented range372.15–358.86 Ma
Content packagetetrapod-transition
PBDBtxn:36963
Evidence boundary
Automated checks cover structure, identifiers, translations and links only; maintainer and external expert review are not complete.
Claim ledger
The Acanthostega limb study treats the material as an early tetrapod and compares its digit number with Ichthyostega and Tulerpeton; this package does not convert that comparison into a universal phylogenetic tree.
claim:taxon:acanthostega:taxonomyThe Acanthostega limb material cited here comes from East Greenland Upper Devonian deposits; the locality is a documented sample, not a global distribution estimate.
claim:taxon:acanthostega:biogeographyDescribed Acanthostega forelimb material preserves eight digits, demonstrating a non-pentadactyl Devonian limb condition; digit count alone does not demonstrate habitual terrestrial walking.
claim:taxon:acanthostega:morphologyThe cited Acanthostega limb study does not directly establish diet, habitat preference or observed locomotor behaviour; ecological fields therefore remain unresolved apart from the bounded depositional context.
claim:taxon:acanthostega:ecologyKnown limits
- A missing branch or fossil occurrence does not imply biological absence. Internal nodes are not calibrated divergence estimates.
References
- Polydactyly in the earliest known tetrapod limbsCoates, M.I.; Clack, J.A. · 1990 · DOI 10.1038/347066a0
- Open Tree of Life web servicesOpenTreeOfLife Project
- The Paleobiology Database application programming interfacePeters, S.E.; McClennen, M. · 2016 · DOI 10.1017/pab.2015.39
- Denormalized occurrence and taxon tables of the Paleobiology DatabaseThe Paleobiology Database Community; Kocsis, Á.T. · 2026 · DOI 10.5281/zenodo.21620933