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During the Cenozoic, mammals proliferated from a few small, simple, generalised forms into a diverse collection of terrestrial, marine, and flying animals, giving this period its other name, the Age of Mammals. The Cenozoic is just as much the age of savannas, the age of co-dependent flowering plants and insects, and the age of birds. [40]
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.
An approximate timescale of key Cenozoic events. Vertical axis scale: Millions of years ago The European Land Mammal Mega Zones (abbreviation: ELMMZ , more commonly known as European land mammal ages or ELMA ) are zones in rock layers that have a specific assemblage of fossils ( biozones ) based on occurrences of fossil assemblages of European ...
Later into the period, it began to withdraw and the coastal plains of the western states were home to dinosaurs like Edmontosaurus, Triceratops, and Tyrannosaurus. Another mass extinction ended the reign of the dinosaurs. The Cenozoic Era began afterward. The inland sea of the Cretaceous gradually vanished and mammals were beginning to dominate ...
The giant anteater, Myrmecophaga tridactyla, the largest living descendant of South America's early Cenozoic mammalian fauna. Xenarthrans are a curious group of mammals that developed morphological adaptations for specialized diets very early in their history. [40]
It is the second and most recent epoch of the Neogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. The Pliocene follows the Miocene Epoch and is followed by the Pleistocene Epoch.
He claims that even though mammals (such as humans) can have relatively long lifespans, we still operate under dinosaur-era restraints. Mammals may struggle to attain long life thanks to dinosaurs.
The North American land-mammal-age system was formalized in 1941 as a series of provincial land-mammal ages. [2] The system was the standard for correlations in the terrestrial Cenozoic record of North America and was the source for similar time scales dealing with other continents.