Apropos the old joke, you think this one is the fault of Saskatchewan or BC?
07.03.2026 16:02
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Apropos the old joke, you think this one is the fault of Saskatchewan or BC?
Results from the Flocking #paleostream!
Megamastax, Ornitholestes, Tanyka and Eosteus
Illustrazione che mostra Tanyka amnicola in vita, mentre si nutre di piante acquatiche.
Fossile che mostra i dentelli sulla mandibola, formando una superficie simile a una grattugia, che potrebbe essere stata usata per triturare materiale vegetale.
Scoperto un antico erbivoro con mascella contorta e denti rivolti lateralmente che già ai suoi tempi era un “fossile vivente”
#paleontologia @scienze
In un letto di fiume secco in Brasile, all’interno di una fitta foresta in Amazzonia, un team di paleontologi […]
[Original post on mastodon.uno]
A ilustração mostra um anfíbio de 1 m comprimento, com corpo parecido a uma salamandra, cor verde-grisalho, se alimentando de algas e pequenos crustáceos, no fundo de um lago. Ao fundo há alguns peixes nadando. Obra de @vitor-silva.bsky.social
optou por ocupar um nicho ecológico pouco explorado. Este tetrápode bizarro foi uma forma de sucesso no início do Período Permiano, atestado pelo fato de ter uma ocorrência comprovada em vários municípios da Bacia do Parnaíba, e mostra quão original algumas estratégias de vida podem ser. +
Ao abrir a boca, a mandíbula faria um pequeno movimento de giro no seu eixo, isso explicaria um pouco a posição "torta" dos seus dentes, que aparentemente ficam "pra fora". Os anfíbios de hoje são quase totalmente carnívoros, e os da Era Paleozoica também. Tanyka amnicola +
(referência ao leito do Riacho Pedra de Fogo). Essa mandíbula bizarra estava cheia de pequenos dentinhos formando uma espécie de lixa que o animal teria usado para raspar ou amassar algum alimento de difícil digestão (plantas, algas, pequenos invertebrados com carapaça ou tudo isso). +
ficou claro que as esquisitices não eram resultado de algum tipo de deformação por processos geológicos mas características reais desta nova espécie. A palavra "Tanyka", em guaraní, significa "mandíbula" (a única parte do corpo que conhecemos) e "amnicola" significa "habitante do rio" em grego +
Temos já 9 mandíbulas de Tanyka amnicola, tanto do Piauí (Nazária) quanto do Maranhão, incluíndo duas bem completas, uma encontrada em Timon-MA, e a melhor preservada de todas, no Riacho Pedra de Fogo no Maranhão. Só após termos esta quantidade de material, incluindo fósseis muito bem preservados +
De lá pra cá vínhamos encontrando outras mandíbulas incompletas desta espécie, sem entender muito bem o que ela era. As mandíbulas são notoriamente "tortas", com dentes orientados "pra fora", o que sempre nos causou estranheza. +
Tanyka amnicola é um tetrápode basal. Ele representa uma linhagem que vem desde o início do Carbonífero e que não é próxima dos anfíbios encontrados nos períodos Permiano ou Triássico (os Temnospondyli). Em outras palavras, Tanyka é uma relíquia carbonífera. +
#FossilFriday com uma nova espécie de anfíbio fóssil. Saudemos a Tanyka amnicola! +
@jdpardo.bsky.social @vitor-silva.bsky.social
A digital painting of a Megamastax
A digital portrait of an Ornitholestes
A digital painting of a Tanyka
A digital painting of an Eosteus
Flocking!
Megamastax, Ornitholestes, Tanyka, Eosteus.
#paleoart #paleostream #sciart #art
Gorgeous! Let me know how it goes!
Thanks Alice!
†Tanyka amnicola - Pardo et al., 2026.
📃 | "Um tetrápode basal aberrante do Permiano Inferior do Brasil."
🔗 | royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
A fascinating discovery from the Pedra de Fogo Formation, Lower Permian in Northeast of Brazil: Tanyka amnicola, a stem-tetrapod that extends the record of a lineage primarily known from the Carboniferous, and shows adaptations to a peculiar niche that exploited a herbivorous or omnivorous diet. The name "Tanyka" comes from Guarani, local indigenous language, and the word means "jaw"; from Latin, "amnicola" means "that lives in/near the river". The fossils are all of jaws, most of them approximately 17 cm long (one of them being 25% larger), and the animal would have reached ~1 m in length. Known from 9 jaws, Tanyka had teeth turned outwards, as if its mouth were twisted. What seemed like a deformation due to injury or fossilization proved to be a feature of the species as more and more specimens were found, some very well preserved. The strange shape is probably due to a slight rotation that the jaw makes on its own axis when opening the mouth. The posterior portion of mandible also had a curious triangular flange pointing outwards. In addition to the main teeth row, next to it there were remarkable pads full of denticles that would have acted like a grinder. With them, Tanyka possibly scraped and crushed algae, plants, and/or hard-shelled invertebrates, being a herbivore or omnivore. This is something super rare among amphibians, extinct or extant, and shows us how these ancient tetrapods explored unusual niches. Tanyka is not a close relative of contemporary Permian temnospondyl amphibians, but it is part of a group of stem-tetrapods that originated in the Carboniferous, the baphetids. A lost survivor, compared to what the platypus represents for mammals today. In the scene, Tanyka feeds on algae and conchostracans that hide among them.
What a birthday gift seeing this amazing news out today! A fascinating discovery from the Pedra de Fogo Formation, Lower Permian in Brazil: Tanyka amnicola!
At the invitation of Dr. Juan Cisneros, I had the pleasure of creating the artwork for the media release of the research!
#SciArt #Paleoart
Interestingly, Eryops is extremely common in North America (it is rare in Europe) but we haven't found a single fossil of it in Brazil out of over 1300-1400 vertebrate fossils to date. The big carnivore there is Prionosuchus, and it is ecologically very different from Eryops.
That's Eryops, which is a relative of modern amphibians and therefore much more advanced than Tanyka. Eryops is also quite different ecologically: it was a very large predator of medium sized amphibians and amniotes, and it probably was a lot better at walking on land.
Excellent! So glad to hear!
Great 🧵. “This is the second stem tetrapod group known to have survived until the end of the early Permian in Gondwana despite local extirpation in Laurussia, implying that current hypotheses of Carboniferous tetrapod turnover are oversimplified.”
Big fish news coming out in @nature.com today from the IVPP crew… first, more of the late Silurian osteichthyan #Megamastax from Yunnan, AND #Eosteus from the early Silurian of Chongqing, the world's earliest osteichthyan!
1. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
2. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
This paper carries a special satisfaction for me. Years ago, Donglei Chen and I discovered small tooth-bearing elements in Silurian vertebrate micro-residues (obtained by dissolving rock in acid) of the stem osteichthyans Andreolepis and Lophosteus. We worked out that they must be the inner dental
And another fantastic little Silurian stem osteichthyan. What a day.
Finally, we get a proper look at the stem-ostreichthyan Megamastax. What a strange and beautiful animal.
Stem tetrapod before and after they were called beautiful
🚨New species alert! 🚨
Meet Tanyka amnicola – a 275-million-year-old animal from Brazil with twisted jaws and sideways-facing teeth!
Find out more about this strange species 👇
www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/new...
Pardo et al. report a new stem tetrapod, Tanyka amnicola, from Brazil 🇧🇷 that survived into the early #Permian, with interesting implications for faunal #evolution across the Permo-Carboniferous in the Southern Hemisphere. ⬇️
#Paleontology #Fossils #Science
royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article...
By the way, this fantastic art is by Vitor Silva.
We've put a 3D surface scan of the holotype jaw on Dryad so you can pull this up in any 3D imaging program (or 3D print it!) and see for yourself how weird this animal is. Please do!
datadryad.org/dataset/doi:...
