Mandibular form and function is more disparate in amniotes than in non-amniote tetrapods from the late Palaeozoic

Terrestrial tetrapods originated during the Middle Devonian, and the group rapidly diversified throughout the subsequent Carboniferous and Permian periods. Feeding in air rather than water is expected to require changes to tetrapod mandibular form and function. Previous biomechanical studies on jaw evolution, however, found that the increase in functional disparity lagged behind terrestrialisation by approximately 70 Myr, coinciding with the origin of amniotes and herbivory. We expand on a previous dataset composed primarily of non-amniote tetrapods to identify the drivers of this diversification, including representatives of all major amniote clades from the Permo-Carboniferous. First, we measured nine biomechanical traits from 111 tetrapod jaws in medial view. Second, we performed an Elliptical Fourier Analysis on 198 jaws in lateral view and 73 jaws in occlusal view. The first peak in jaw disparity, during the Pennsylvanian, occurs in carnivorous non-amniote tetrapods. However, the jaws of amniotes, particularly those inferred as herbivorous, are consistently more disparate than non-amniote tetrapods from the early Permian, especially in terms of jaw depth, symphysial length and force transmission. Functional and shape disparity of Palaeozoic tetrapod jaws follow a similar pattern that is explained by large-scale faunal turnovers and ecosystem structures.