Palaeobiogeography of Australian fossil amphibians

Abstract

Australia has representatives of the earliest known tetrapod vertebrates from the Late Devonian and evidence that their amphibian descendants survived here at least until the Viséan. There is no record of tetrapods from later in the Carboniferous or the earlier part of the Permian, and scant remains only from the Late Permian. A single Permian record from the Sydney Basin, if correctly identified, indicates the presence of advanced temnospondyls (stereospondyls) much earlier in the fossil record than formerly predicted. We propose the existence of a Gondwanan refuge for descendants of late Permian temnospondyls, which became extinct in the latest Permian elsewhere. In contrast, the Early Triassic amphibian fauna of Australia is diverse and geographically widespread. It includes stem‐stereospondyls indicative of a Gondwanan origin for the entire radiation of Mesozoic stereospondyls. Australia was also a refuge for post‐Triassic stereospondyl amphibians, represented by two Early Jurassic forms and the last known survivor of that group in the Early Cretaceous.

Keywords:

• Tetrapods
• Amphibians
• Temnospondyli
• Stereospondyli
• Biogeography
• Gondwana
• Australia

Notes

Corresponding author.