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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.
Since the 19th century, a significant amount of research has been conducted on the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, the mass extinction that ended the dinosaur-dominated Mesozoic Era and set the stage for the Age of Mammals, or Cenozoic Era. A chronology of this research is presented here.
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.
A finer subdivision was established by Pierre Mein in 1975, who divided the Neogene in 17 zones, known as the MN zonation, indicated by the letters MN (Mammal Neogene) and a number. Similarly, a more detailed subdivision for the Paleogene period was established. There are 30 such Mammal Paleogene zones (MP1 to MP30, numbered from old to young). [2]
Mammals originated from cynodonts, an advanced group of therapsids, during the Late Triassic to Early Jurassic. Mammals achieved their modern diversity in the Paleogene and Neogene periods of the Cenozoic era, after the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs, and have been the dominant terrestrial animal group from 66 million years ago to the present.
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.
Before an asteroid wiped out nearly all non-avian animals 66 million years ago, mammals typically fell on the smaller side, usually with similar statures to modern day rats and mice, Eberle said.