Establishing serial homology between the carpals and tarsals

The forelimb and hindlimb of tetrapods are serially homologous structures that share a conserved developmental framework. Despite their evolutionary divergence in form and function, the two sets of limbs retain parallel genetic and morphogenetic patterning, enabling comparisons across and within species. While serial homology has been well established for proximal limb elements (i.e., girdle and long bones), the mesopodium (the carpals and tarsals) has received comparatively little attention. This gap is due in part to the morphological complexity of these regions and the absence of a clear, consistent framework for one-to-one comparison. In this paper, we present a framework for morphological comparisons between the limbs by proposing explicit serial homologies between individual carpal and tarsal elements. Building on Owen's classical criteria of homology (i.e., composition, relative position, and development), we integrate evidence from comparative anatomy, embryology, and the fossil record to justify specific pairings. In doing so, we extend previous efforts that relied primarily on gross morphology by incorporating developmental timing, positional shifts, and patterns of fusion and reduction of elements observed across taxa. This proposed framework enables new comparative analyses of the mesopodium, with implications for future studies of covariation, modularity, and functional-adaptive evolution, expanding the anatomical toolkit for addressing long-standing questions in vertebrate limb evolution. By refining the criteria for mesopodial homology, this work contributes to a more complete understanding of integration between sets of limbs and their process of evolutionary divergence in tetrapods.