Australia: The Land Where Time Began

A biography of the Australian continent 

They are characterised by several features:

• The enamel and dentine of the teeth are strongly infolded, a cross section resembling a maze
• A skull similar in structure to the Anaspids, a massive skull roof in which the only openings are for the nostrils, eyes and a parietal eye. The skull was usually fairly flat with a large amount of dermal armour. The latter characteristic was present until the appearance of the later, more reptilian forms
• 4-piece vertebrae - an intercentrum, 2 peluracentra and a neural arch or spine. The different groups were distinguished by the relative sizes of the pieces of the vertebrae.

Labyrinthodontia is an obsolete term for members of the extinct superorder (or subclass) (Labyrinthodontia) of amphibians. Labyrinthodonts were among the dominant animals of the Late Palaeozoic and Early Mesozoic.

• The Triassic Labyrinthodonts of Australia
• Deposits Containing Amphibian Fossils
• Phylogeny of Australian temnospondyl labyrinthodonts
• Some Interesting Fossil Finds From the Non-Marine Permian and Triassic Sequences in Northern Tasmania, Australia

Sources & Further reading

1. John A Long, Dinosaurs of Australia and New Zealand, University of New South Wales Press
2. Vickers-Rich, Patricia & Rich, Thomas Hewitt, 1993 Wildlife of Gondwana, Reed Australia.