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Several groups of tetrapods have undergone secondary aquatic adaptation, an evolutionary transition from being purely terrestrial to living at least part of the time in water. These animals are called "secondarily aquatic" because although their ancestors lived on land for hundreds of millions of years, they all originally descended from ...
The two subclades of crown tetrapods are Batrachomorpha and Reptiliomorpha. Batrachomorphs are all animals sharing a more recent common ancestry with living amphibians than with living amniotes (reptiles, birds, and mammals). Reptiliomorphs are all animals sharing a more recent common ancestry with living amniotes than with living amphibians. [22]
Sauropterygians were a diverse group of aquatic reptiles adapted for flipper-based aquatic locomotion. This group included the plesiosaurs, nothosaurs, and placodonts. Mosasaurs were a group of large, aquatic squamates (relatives of modern-day lizards and snakes) which became the dominant marine predators towards the end of the Cretaceous period.
Another advantage of living in a group is seen in many prey species in their ability to increase defenses against predatory animals. A way that a group may increase its defenses against predators is through the ‘many-eyes effect’. This effect states that larger groups of animals are better at detecting predators compared to smaller groups. [15]
Marine life, sea life or ocean life is the collective ecological communities that encompass all aquatic animals, plants, algae, fungi, protists, single-celled microorganisms and associated viruses living in the saline water of marine habitats, either the sea water of marginal seas and oceans, or the brackish water of coastal wetlands, lagoons ...
The term was initially used as a general adjective for animals that could live on land or in water, including seals and otters. [7] Traditionally, the class Amphibia includes all tetrapod vertebrates that are not amniotes. Amphibia in its widest sense was divided into three subclasses, two of which are extinct: [8]
The Osteolepiformes and Elpistostegalia are two crown groups of rhipidistians with respect to the tetrapods. [2] The development of skull roof and cheekbone patterns in these organisms match those found in the first tetrapods. Palatal and nasal skeletal features like choanae are present in these groups and are also observed in modern amphibians.
The phylactolaemates live in all types of freshwater environment – lakes and ponds, rivers and streams, and estuaries [66] – and are among the most abundant sessile freshwater animals. [78] Some ctenostomes are exclusively freshwater while others prefer brackish water but can survive in freshwater. [66]