Arboreal

moving through trees

Arboreal is an adjective in biology for an animal which lives in the trees.

All forests have had animals living in them. Those animals have adaptations which enable them to live and move about in trees.[1] The earliest one known is Suminia, a synapsid of the late Permian, about 260 million years ago. [2]

References change

  1. Cartmill M. 1985. Climbing. In Functional vertebrate morphology. eds. Hildebrand D et al. Belknap Press, Harvard. 73–88
  2. Jörg Fröbisch and Robert R. Reisz 2009. The Late Permian herbivore Suminia and the early evolution of arboreality in terrestrial vertebrate ecosystems. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Online First DOI:10.1098/rspb.2009.0911