Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The term "thecodont", now considered an obsolete term, was first used by the English paleontologist Richard Owen in 1859 to describe Triassic archosaurs, and it became widely used in the 20th century. Thecodonts were considered the "basal stock" from which the more advanced archosaurs descended.
Avemetatarsalia (meaning "bird metatarsals") is a clade of diapsid reptiles containing all archosaurs more closely related to birds than to crocodilians. [2] The two most successful groups of avemetatarsalians were the dinosaurs and pterosaurs.
The "classic" definition of archosaur utilized prior to the widespread use of cladistics is now roughly equivalent to the clade Archosauriformes. [5] Archosaurus is still considered the oldest undisputed archosauriform, as well as one of the few valid members of the family Proterosuchidae .
Traditionally, the order Thecodontia Owen, 1859 was divided into four suborders, the Proterosuchia (early primitive forms, another paraphyletic assemblage), Phytosauria (large crocodile-like semi-aquatic animals), the Aetosauria (armoured herbivores), and the Pseudosuchia, a wastebasket taxon intended to be paraphyletic to all later archosaurs (see e.g., Alfred Sherwood Romer's Vertebrate ...
Archosauriformes (Greek for 'ruling lizards', and Latin for 'form') is a clade of diapsid reptiles encompassing archosaurs and some of their close relatives. It was defined by Jacques Gauthier (1994) as the clade stemming from the last common ancestor of Proterosuchidae and Archosauria. [3]
Articles relating to the Archosaurs, a clade of diapsids, with birds and crocodilians as the only living representatives. Archosaurs are broadly classified as reptiles, in the cladistic sense of term which includes birds. Extinct archosaurs include non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and extinct relatives of
Prestosuchidae (in its widest usage) is a polyphyletic grouping of carnivorous archosaurs that lived during the Triassic. They were large active terrestrial apex predators, ranging from around 2.5 to 7 metres (8.2 to 23.0 ft) in length. They succeeded the Erythrosuchidae as the largest archosaurs of their time. While resembling erythrosuchids ...
Figure 1:In mammals, the quadrate and articular bones are small and part of the middle ear; the lower jaw consists only of dentary bone.. While living mammal species can be identified by the presence of milk-producing mammary glands in the females, other features are required when classifying fossils, because mammary glands and other soft-tissue features are not visible in fossils.