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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. [ 269 ] 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).
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]
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.
Class Reptilia (reptiles, paraphyletic) Class Aves (birds) Class Mammalia (mammals) In addition to these, there are two classes of extinct armoured fishes, Placodermi and Acanthodii, both paraphyletic. Other ways of classifying the vertebrates have been devised, particularly with emphasis on the phylogeny of early amphibians and reptiles.
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]
The evolution of birds began in the Jurassic Period, with the earliest birds derived from a clade of theropod dinosaurs named Paraves. [1] Birds are categorized as a biological class, Aves. For more than a century, the small theropod dinosaur Archaeopteryx lithographica from the Late Jurassic period was considered to have been the earliest bird.