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Thecodontia (meaning 'socket-teeth'), now considered an obsolete taxonomic grouping, was formerly used to describe a diverse "order" of early archosaurian reptiles that first appeared in the latest Permian period and flourished until the end of the Triassic period. All of them were built somewhat like crocodiles but with shorter skulls, more ...
Thecodont dentition is a morphological arrangement in which the base of the tooth is completely enclosed in a deep socket of bone, as seen in crocodilians, dinosaurs and mammals, and opposed to acrodont and pleurodont dentition seen in squamate reptiles. [1] Notably, this appears to be the ancestral tooth condition in Amniota. [2]
When the upper and lower dental formulae are the same, some texts write the formula without a fraction (in this case, 2.1.2.3), on the implicit assumption that the reader will realise it must apply to both upper and lower quadrants. This is seen, for example, throughout The Cambridge Dictionary of Human Biology and Evolution.
The thecodont condition was historically used to define a clade, the Thecodontia, which is now considered paraphyletic and thus obsolete. [7] angular The angular is a dermal bone of the lower jaw. In lateral view, it covers a larger area of the posteroventral region of the jaw, being located behind the dentary and below the surangular.
In contrast, Archosauromorphs possess a parasagittal gait, a reduction in their dermal girdle, a reduction and/or loss of the sternum, and a more thecodont dentition. Living lepidosauromorphs have retained an ectothermic (" cold blooded ") metabolism, unlike the ancestral condition in archosauromorphs.
Thecodont reptiles and theropod dinosaur fossils have an interdental plate, whereas acrodont reptiles such as Sphenodontia do not. [3] Its presence in Archaeopteryx , an extinct avialan , resulted in the proposal of the dinosaur-bird connection .
This feature is responsible for the name "thecodont" (meaning "socket teeth"), [8] which early paleontologists applied to many Triassic archosaurs. [7] Additionally, non-muscular cheek and lip tissue appear in various forms throughout the clade, with all living archosaurs lacking non-muscular lips, unlike most non-avian saurischian dinosaurs. [ 9 ]
A diphyodont is any animal with two sets of teeth, initially the deciduous set and consecutively the permanent set. [1] [2] [3] Most mammals are diphyodonts—as to chew their food they need a strong, durable and complete set of teeth.