Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Birds of prey specialise in hunting mammals or other birds, while vultures are specialised scavengers. Birds are also preyed upon by a range of mammals including a few avivorous bats. [ 266 ] A wide range of endo- and ectoparasites depend on birds and some parasites that are transmitted from parent to young have co-evolved and show host ...
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:
Synapsida [a] is a diverse group of tetrapod vertebrates that includes all mammals and their extinct relatives. It is one of the two major clades of the group Amniota, the other being the more diverse group Sauropsida (which includes all extant reptiles and birds).
Of the large marine reptiles, only sea turtles are left, and, of the dinosaurs, only the small feathered theropods survived in the form of birds. The end of the “Age of Reptiles” led to the “Age of Mammals”. Despite the change in phrasing, reptile diversification continued throughout the Cenozoic.
Like birds, mammals can forage or hunt in weather and climates too cold for ectothermic ("cold-blooded") reptiles and insects. Endothermy requires plenty of food energy, so mammals eat more food per unit of body weight than most reptiles. [141] Small insectivorous mammals eat prodigious amounts for their size.
Sauropsida (Greek for "lizard faces") is a clade of amniotes, broadly equivalent to the class Reptilia, though typically used in a broader sense to also include extinct stem-group relatives of modern reptiles and birds (which, as theropod dinosaurs, are nested within reptiles as more closely related to crocodilians than to lizards or turtles). [2]
Depending on the systematics, Sauria includes all modern reptiles [3] or most of them (including birds, a type of archosaur) as well as various extinct groups. [4] Sauria lies within the larger total group Sauropsida, which also contains various stem-reptiles which are more closely related to reptiles than to mammals. [3]
A turning point came in the early twentieth century with the writings of Gerhard Heilmann of Denmark.An artist by trade, Heilmann had a scholarly interest in birds and from 1913 to 1916, expanding on earlier work by Othenio Abel, [12] published the results of his research in several parts, dealing with the anatomy, embryology, behavior, paleontology, and evolution of birds. [13]