Breathing in Stegocephalians
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Scan day: 09 February 2014 UTC
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Description: Most tetrapods breathe with the lungs that they inherited from their ancestors such as the coelacanth and lungfishes and this is probably also true of extinct groups of stegocephalians.
Breathing can only be studied indirectly in extinct groups of stegocephalians, but we can infer that most had lungs, like lungfishes, some actinopterygians (Polypterus), and most tetrapods. In addition to this, some groups had larvae with external gills (temnospondyls, seymouriamorphs), although the adults appear to have lost these structures. Cutaneous respiration may have been possible in a few groups, but it was probably not widespread because many stegocephalians were too large for this mechanism to work well, and most were covered in bony scales that would have interfered with gas exchange.
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