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Linnaeus, working from species-poor Sweden, where the common adder and grass snake are often found hunting in water, included all reptiles and amphibians in class "III – Amphibia" in his Systema Naturæ. [8] The terms reptile and amphibian were largely interchangeable, reptile (from Latin repere, 'to creep') being preferred by the French. [9]
One of the best known early reptiles is Mesosaurus, a genus from the Early Permian that had returned to water, feeding on fish. The earliest reptiles were largely overshadowed by bigger labyrinthodont amphibians, such as Cochleosaurus, and remained a small, inconspicuous part of the fauna until after the small ice age at the end of the ...
The first fully terrestrial vertebrates were reptilian amniotes — their eggs had internal membranes that allowed the developing embryo to breathe but kept water in. This allowed amniotes to lay eggs on dry land, while amphibians generally need to lay their eggs in water (a few amphibians, such as the common Suriname toad, have evolved other ways of getting around this limitation).
Since first appearing during the age of dinosaurs, snakes have authored an evolutionary success story - slithering into almost every habitat on Earth, from oceans to tree tops. Scientists ...
Some marine reptiles, such as ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, metriorhynchid thalattosuchians, and mosasaurs became so well adapted to a marine lifestyle that they were incapable of venturing onto land and gave birth in the water. Others, such as sea turtles and saltwater crocodiles, return to shore to lay their eggs.
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.
A massive jawbone found by a father-daughter fossil-collecting duo on a beach in Somerset along the English coast belonged to a newfound species that’s likely the largest known marine reptile to ...
Alligators move on land by two forms of locomotion, referred to as "sprawl" and "high walk". The sprawl is a forward movement with the belly making contact with the ground and is used to transition to "high walk" or to slither over wet substrate into water.