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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.
Ceratopsian dinosaurs appear in the fossil record and the oldest known eutherian mammal: Juramaia. 160 Ma Multituberculate mammals (genus Rugosodon) appear in eastern China. 155 Ma First blood-sucking insects (ceratopogonids), rudist bivalves, and cheilostome bryozoans.
An enigmatic bipedal creature called Nyasasaurus from Tanzania, known from fragmentary fossils perhaps dating to 240–245 million years ago, represents what the earliest dinosaurs may have looked ...
Mammals in particular diversified in the Paleogene, [29] evolving new forms such as horses, whales, bats, and primates. The surviving group of dinosaurs were avians, a few species of ground and water fowl, which radiated into all modern species of birds. [30] Among other groups, teleost fish [31] and perhaps lizards [23] also radiated.
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.
Vertebrate paleontology is the subfield of paleontology that seeks to discover, through the study of fossilized remains, the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct vertebrates (animals with vertebrae and their descendants). It also tries to connect, by using the evolutionary timeline, the animals of the past and their modern-day ...
The evolution of animals with backbones is one of the greatest stories in natural history. To tell this story, David presents explosive new fossil evidence from China, a region he has long dreamt of exploring and the frontier of modern paleontological research. This episode goes through how the vertebrates evolved and came onto land.
The most striking feature of evolution of the pelvis in primates is the widening and the shortening of the blade called the ilium. Because of the stresses involved in bipedal locomotion, the muscles of the thigh move the thigh forward and backward, providing the power for bi-pedal and quadrupedal locomotion. [17]