Fedexia

My vert zoo guys and I were talking the other day about the significance of certain regions when it comes to looking for certain types of fossils. I saw Neil Shubin last year, and he discussed the importance of knowing where to look - where to find exposed rocks of the right type and the right age. China for early birds, the Sahara for crocodilians, western U.S. for tyrannosaurs - the list goes on. There are several key sites for the early amphibians. Shubin found Tiktaalik in the Canadian Arctic, but he and other specialists on that period have focused heavily on western Pennsylvania.

A new report appearing in the Annals of Carnegie Museum describes a new species, found in 2004 near the Pittsburgh International Airport. It's named Fedexia streigeli, in recognition of the fact that the site where it was found is owned by the FedEx corporation. The rocks in which F. streigeli was found are from the Pennsylvanian Period, about 300 million years old. This is important, in that it pushes even further back the time at which terrestrial amphibians can be documented.

The roughly three-foot long Fedexia belonged to a group of amphibians known as the Trematopidae, unique in that they were adapted for a largely terrestrial existence and perhaps returned to the water only to lay their eggs. As such, this was likely the first North American vertebrate group to tackle the terrestrial lifestyle.

Read more here at Science Daily.