Around 307 million years ago, an animal roughly the size of a soccer ball was likely munching on ferns in an ancient forest. A fossil of this creature is now considered one of the earliest known land vertebrates to evolve to eat plants, marking the beginning of herbivory on Earth. Understanding the origins of plant-based diets in animals provides insight into the evolution of ecosystems and the development of digestive systems.
Scientists have described the 307-million-year-old fossil of one of the first land vertebrates to develop the ability to consume plants.
“This is one of the oldest known four-limbed animals to eat vegetation,” said Arjan Mann, assistant curator of fossil fishes and early tetrapods at the Field Museum Chicago and lead author of the study, according to Phys.org.
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“The discovery suggests that experimentation with herbivory occurred as early as the first terrestrial tetrapods, ancient relatives of all land vertebrates, including us,” he added.
Fossil Discovery on Nova Scotia Cliffs
Researchers have named the new species Tyrannoroter heberti, meaning “tyrant crusher belonging to Hebert,” in honor of its discoverer, Brian Hebert. Researchers estimate that Tyrannoroter was a robust, four-legged animal approximately one foot in length.
“It was about the size and shape of an American football,” Mann stated.
The team unearthed the Tyrannoroter fossil on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, under challenging field conditions. The skull was the only portion recovered, but based on the size of the head and its close relatives,
“Nova Scotia has the highest tides in the world. When we were working there, we were racing against the tide as the ocean came back in,” Mann explained.
Brian Hebert discovered the small skull within a petrified tree trunk during a field season led by Hillary Maddin, a professor of paleontology at Carleton University.
“The skull is wide and heart-shaped, very narrow at the snout but very wide at the back. Within five seconds of looking at it, I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a microsaur pantylid,’” Mann said.
Early Clues to the Evolution of Plant-Eating Animals
Scanning revealed that the animal’s mouth contained an additional set of tightly packed teeth, seemingly designed for crushing and grinding plant matter.
“We were most excited to notice what was hidden inside the mouth of this animal after it was scanned—a mouth crammed full of an additional set of teeth for breaking down and grinding food, like plants,” said Hillary Maddin, senior author of the study.
This complex dental structure indicates that the ability to eat plants emerged earlier than previously thought.
Researchers believe this capability may have evolved from a habit of consuming small, hard-shelled insects, which helped ancient animals develop their digestive systems to handle more difficult plant material.
Paleontologist Hans Sues added that Tyrannoroter heberti occupies an important position in evolution.
“Tyrannoroter heberti is particularly interesting because it was previously thought that herbivory was limited to amniotes. It is a stem amniote that has specialized dental arrangements that could be used to process plant food,” he said.
Unfortunately, this group of animals did not survive major environmental shifts. At the end of the Carboniferous period, the planet experienced global warming and the collapse of rainforest ecosystems. Mann explained that the lineage of animals to which Tyrannoroter belonged did not fare well during these changes.
“The animal lineage that includes Tyrannoroter didn’t do well. This could be one data point in a larger picture of what happened to plant-eating animals when rapid climate change altered ecosystems and the plants that could grow there,” Sues added.
The study’s findings were published in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution on February 10, 2026, under the title “Carboniferous recumbirostran elucidates the origins of terrestrial herbivory.”
The author is an intern with the Kemnaker Hub at detikcom.
(rhr/faz)
