The evidence that Casineria belongs in the family tree appears stronger, at least at first glance. In addition to the five-finger hand, the structure of the forearm bones, the backbone and the scales are more like those of reptiles than amphibians. What we're seeing in the new animal is that it was able to use its four legs also for propulsion. The other thing we were able to see was the fingers almost certainly had claws that appear to be capable of gripping and they were probably able to use these to climb over things. The fossil also supports an idea of Carroll's, first proposed in the early '70s, that the early reptiles had to be small.
Amphibians lay eggs in water.
The eggs then hatch into free-swimming larvae such as frog tadpoles, absorbing nutrients from the water. The earliest reptiles would have laid presumably similar-sized eggs on land, but the eggs would have had to contain all necessary nutrients. Without a tadpole stage, land animals couldn't grow as large as amphibians. They'd be small, like Casineria . The hatchlings of these early reptiles would be about the half the size of the adults.