Herbivorous caseids also show very different dietary adaptations from those seen in another group of basal synapsids, the Edaphosauridae. The latter had, in addition to the marginal dentition, a dental battery made up of numerous teeth located both on the palate and on the inner surface of the lower jaws. In herbivorous caseids, the palatal teeth are smaller, and the inner surface of the lower jaws bears no teeth. Instead of a dental battery, they had a massive tongue (as indicated by the presence of a highly developed hyoid apparatus found in Ennatosaurus and Euromycter) perhaps rough, with which they had to compress food against the palatal teeth. The forelimbs of caseids are often more robust than the hindlimbs. It has indeed been observed that the bones of the forelimbs gained in robustness from the beginning of the evolution of the group, before the appearance of large species, while the hindlimbs remained slenderer. These characteristics suggest that the initial strengthening of the forelimbs was probably related to a particular function such as digging, and that this trait was later exapted by more derived and larger caseids to support their weights of up to several hundred kilograms. During their evolutionary history, caseids also show a reduction in their phalangeal formula. The most basal caseids like Eoasea, Callibrachion, and Martensius possessed the plesiomorphic condition of early amniotes with a phalangeal formula of 2-3-4-5-3 for manus and 2-3-4-5-4 for pes. In Euromycter the manus has a formula of 2-3-4-4-3 (the pes is unknown). In the more derived forms like Cotylorhynchus the manus and pes show a phalangeal formula of 2-2-3-3-2. Along with this reduction in the number of phalanges, the proportions of the autopods also change in derived caseids with metacarpals, metatarsals, and phalanges becoming shorter and broader. At the extreme of this specialization the genus Angelosaurus has short, broad, and smooth ungual phalanges which resemble hooves rather than claws. Footprints Many vertebrate tracks have been proposed as belonging to Caseidae. In the early 2000s, large footprints known as Brontopus giganteus from the Permian Lodève basin in southern France were considered to belong either to a caseid or dinocephalian therapsid. In 2019, Lorenzo Marchetti and colleagues, however, determined that dinocephalians were most likely the trackmakers of the ichnogenus Brontopus. In 2012, Rafael Costa da Silva and colleagues proposed that the ichnogenus Chelichnus, widely distributed in Permian desert facies (fossil dunes) of Europe, North