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The tetrapods, including all large- and medium-sized land animals, have been among the best understood animals since earliest times. By Aristotle's time, the basic division between mammals, birds and egg-laying tetrapods (the "herptiles") was well known, and the inclusion of the legless snakes into this group was likewise recognized. [28]
[3] Similarly, laurasiathere perissodactyls and afrothere paenungulates have several features in common, to the point of there being no obvious distinction among basal taxa of both groups. [4] Many aquatic mammals or marine mammals independently came to have adaptations to live in water, such as similar-looking tail flukes in dugongs and whales.
Comparative anatomy is the study of similarities and differences in the anatomy of different species. It is closely related to evolutionary biology and phylogeny [ 1 ] (the evolution of species). The science began in the classical era , continuing in the early modern period with work by Pierre Belon who noted the similarities of the skeletons ...
The earliest evidence for life on Earth includes: 3.8 billion-year-old biogenic hematite in a banded iron formation of the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt in Canada; [30] graphite in 3.7 billion-year-old metasedimentary rocks in western Greenland; [31] and microbial mat fossils in 3.48 billion-year-old sandstone in Western Australia. [32] [33 ...
The striped rocket frog, Litoria nasuta, can leap over two metres (6 + 1 ⁄ 2 feet), a distance that is more than fifty times its body length of 55 mm (2 + 1 ⁄ 4 in). [105] There are tremendous differences between species in jumping capability.
Evolutionary theory predicted that since amphibians evolved from fish, an intermediate form should be found in rock dated between 365 and 385 million years ago. Such an intermediate form should have many fish-like characteristics, conserved from 385 million years ago or more, but also have many amphibian characteristics as well.
The first amphibians appeared on land in the Carboniferous. During the Triassic, mammals and dinosaurs appeared, the latter giving rise to birds in the Jurassic. Extant species are roughly equally divided between fishes of all kinds, and tetrapods.
Its most dramatic effect is on the zoogeography of mammals, but it also gave an opportunity for reptiles, amphibians, arthropods, weak-flying or flightless birds, and even freshwater fish to migrate. Coastal and marine biota were affected in the opposite manner; the formation of the Central American Isthmus caused what has been termed the Great ...