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A = Anapsid, B = Synapsid, C = Diapsid. It was traditionally assumed that first reptiles were anapsids, having a solid skull with holes only for the nose, eyes, spinal cord, etc.; [10] the discoveries of synapsid-like openings in the skull roof of the skulls of several members of Parareptilia, including lanthanosuchoids, millerettids, bolosaurids, some nycteroleterids, some procolophonoids and ...
The reptiles as historically defined are paraphyletic, since they exclude both birds and mammals. These respectively evolved from dinosaurs and from early therapsids, both of which were traditionally called "reptiles". [20] Birds are more closely related to crocodilians than the latter are to the rest of extant reptiles. Colin Tudge wrote:
The first fully terrestrial vertebrates were reptilian amniotes — their eggs had internal membranes that allowed the developing embryo to breathe but kept water in. This allowed amniotes to lay eggs on dry land, while amphibians generally need to lay their eggs in water (a few amphibians, such as the common Suriname toad, have evolved other ways of getting around this limitation).
Other groups of animals were restricted in size and niches; mammals, for example, rarely exceeded the size of a domestic cat and were generally rodent-sized carnivores of small prey. [19] Dinosaurs have always been recognized as an extremely varied group: over 900 non-avian dinosaur genera have been confidently identified (2018) with 1124 ...
The blue whale and other baleen whales, the gentle giants of the sea, sift huge quantities of tiny prey from ocean water using a filter-feeding system in their mouths. Fossils unearthed in China's ...
A Brazilian scientist has identified fossils of a small crocodile-like reptile that lived during the Triassic Period several million years before the first dinosaurs. The fossils of the predator ...
Lizard is the common name used for all squamate reptiles other than snakes (and to a lesser extent amphisbaenians), encompassing over 7,000 species, [1] ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains.
The small reptile would have likely roamed the land of what is today southern Brazil, when the world was much hotter. The fossil has been identified as a new silesaurid, an extinct group of reptiles.