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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]
For instance, descendants of the first reptiles include modern reptiles, mammals and birds; the agnathans have given rise to the jawed vertebrates; the bony fishes have given rise to the land vertebrates; a group of amphibians, the labyrinthodonts, have given rise to the reptiles (traditionally including the mammal-like synapsids), which in ...
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 ...
An evolutionary tree (of Amniota, for example, the last common ancestor of mammals and reptiles, and all its descendants) illustrates the initial conditions causing evolutionary patterns of similarity (e.g., all Amniotes produce an egg that possesses the amnios) and the patterns of divergence amongst lineages (e.g., mammals and reptiles ...
Ankylosaurs and glyptodont mammals both had spiked tails. [73] The sauropods and giraffes independently evolved long necks. [74] The horned snouts of ceratopsian dinosaurs like Triceratops have also evolved several times in Cenozoic mammals: rhinos, brontotheres, Arsinoitherium, and Uintatherium. [75] Rhynchosaur teeth resemble that of the ...
The comparison of similarities between organisms of their form or appearance of parts, called their morphology, has long been a way to classify life into closely related groups. This can be done by comparing the structure of adult organisms in different species or by comparing the patterns of how cells grow, divide and even migrate during an ...
Marsupial reproductive organs differ from placentals. For them, the reproductive tract is doubled. Females have two uteri and two vaginas, and before birth, a birth canal forms between them, the median vagina. [7] In most species, males have a split or double penis lying in front of the scrotum, [8] which is not homologous to the placental ...
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 ...