Umzantsia

Umzantsia Temporal range: Late Devonian, 360 Ma PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N ↓
Reconstructed outline
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Sarcopterygii
Clade:	Tetrapodomorpha
Clade:	Stegocephali
Genus:	†Umzantsia Gess & Alberg, 2018
Type species
†Umzantsia amazana Gess & Ahlberg, 2018

Umzantsia is an extinct genus of limbed stegocephalians ('tetrapods', in the broad sense) from the Devonian of South Africa. It contains a single species, Umzantsia amazana. The genus is based on ~360 million year old skull and shoulder bones from the Waterloo Farm lagerstätte, a locality on the south-eastern coast of South Africa. In the Devonian, this area of Gondwana was located within the Antarctic Circle. Together with the find of Tutusius umlambo from the same locality, this provides the first evidence that Devonian limbed vertebrates were not restricted to the tropics as was formerly believed, and suggests that they may have been global in distribution. Waterloo Farm fossils have been metamorphosed and intensely flattened, with the bone tissue replaced by secondary metamorphic mica that is partially altered to kaolinite and chlorite during uplift. They also provide the first evidence of Devonian limbed vertebrates from the continent of Africa, and only the second and third such taxa from Gondwana.^[1][2]