Phylogenetic miniaturization preceding the origin of Reptilia

We looked at
Ossinodus and Acanthostega a few days ago. Today the relatives of those two, from Osteolepis to Gephyrostegus are shown to scale (Fig. 1). Look how small the first reptiles were. Certainly the transition to land was aided by having less weight to lug around without the support of water.

Ossinodus still hasn’t gotten enough press
related to its placement in the origin of four legs with toes from fins. Tiktaalik (with lobefins) is its proximal outgroup. Or to the fact that Ossinodus is our first sabertooth! We need to find a complete manus and pes for Ossinodus to see if it had five toes ore more. Presently we don’t know.

Pederpes has five toes. The manus is not well enough known. The narrow skull suggested that Pederpes breathed by inhaling with a muscular action like most modern tetrapods, rather than by pumping air into the lungs with a throat pouch the way many modern amphibians do. The problem with this is Pederpes is basal to both lizards and frogs, which still breathe by buccal (throat pouch) pumping.

Ichthyostega had more than five toes, Which toes are homologous with our five are indicated here (Fig. 2). The extra digits appear between 1 and 2. Does anyone understand why this is so?

Arikanerpeton is a basal seymouriamorph in the large reptile tree (LRT). Utegenia is a basal lepidospondyl. Both are close but not very close to origin of reptiles. Perhaps the more direct route, at present, is through Eucritta. That taxon has small hands, but large asymmetric feet with long toes, like reptiles. The long toes of Eucritta (Fig. 3) are not at the ends of long legs, but really short legs, an odd combination.

One wonders if
bullet-shaped Eucritta, coming after longer-legged Tulerpeton, was also secondarily aquatic, like Ichthyostega and Acanthostega.

References
Clack JA 1998. A new Early Carboniferous tetrapod with a mélange of crown group characters. Nature 394: 66-69.
Clack JA 2007. Eucritta melanolimnetes from the Early Carboniferous of Scotland, a stem tetrapod showing a mosaic of characteristics. Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh 92:75-95.
Warren A and Turner S 2004. The first stem tetrapod from the Lower Carboniferous of Gondwana. Palaeontology 47(1):151-184.
Warren A 2007. New data on Ossinodus pueri, a stem tetrapod from the Early Carboniferous of Australia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 27(4):850-862.

wiki/Ossinodus
wiki/Eucritta