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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. [ 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:
A close relationship between birds and dinosaurs was first proposed in the nineteenth century after the discovery of the primitive bird Archaeopteryx in Germany. Birds and extinct non-avian dinosaurs share many unique skeletal traits. [1] Moreover, fossils of more than thirty species of non-avian dinosaur with preserved feathers have been ...
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. [139] Small insectivorous mammals eat prodigious amounts for their size.
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.
e. The evolution of mammals has passed through many stages since the first appearance of their synapsid ancestors in the Pennsylvanian sub-period of the late Carboniferous period. By the mid- Triassic, there were many synapsid species that looked like mammals. The lineage leading to today's mammals split up in the Jurassic; synapsids from this ...
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.
Birds have a four-chambered heart, [64] in common with mammals, and some reptiles (mainly the crocodilia). This adaptation allows for an efficient nutrient and oxygen transport throughout the body, providing birds with energy to fly and maintain high levels of activity.