Modern Salamanders are Clues to the Feeding Behavior of Early Terrestrial Vertebrates

An international team led by Dr. Daniel Schwarz and Prof. Dr. Rainer Schoch of the State Museum of Natural History Stuttgart, Germany, studied the feeding behavior of extant salamanders and subsequently used the results of these analyses to draw conclusions about the feeding behavior of early tetrapods.

The research results suggest that early terrestrial vertebrates may have eaten during their first attempts to conquer the land despite lacking mobile tongues like those seen across many of today’s amniotes.

The researchers’ data suggest two scenarios for terrestrial feeding in early tetrapods: either prey was grasped with the jaws and dragged back into the water, where the tongue may have transported it via water currents and the jaws may have processed it (chewing bites)—or prey was processed directly on land by a combination of prey shaking and biting, and finally swallowed with the help of inertial transport (i.e., quick forward movements or head rotations while temporarily releasing the grip on the food).