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Though some animals attained great size, most remained rather small. The forests grew quite dense in the general absence of large herbivores. Mammals proliferated in the Paleocene, and the earliest placental and marsupial mammals are recorded from this time, but most Paleocene taxa have ambiguous affinities.
During the Cenozoic, mammals proliferated from a few small, simple, generalised forms into a diverse collection of terrestrial, marine, and flying animals, giving this period its other name, the Age of Mammals. The Cenozoic is just as much the age of savannas, the age of co-dependent flowering plants and insects, and the age of birds. [40]
First tree sloths and hippopotami, diversification of grazing herbivores like zebras and elephants, large carnivorous mammals like lions and the genus Canis, burrowing rodents, kangaroos, birds, and small carnivores, vultures increase in size, decrease in the number of perissodactyl mammals. Extinction of nimravid carnivores.
Embrithopods are a group of early Cenozoic mammals with evolutionary roots in Northern Africa, eventually traveling over the Neotethys Sea to the Eurasian Eocene island of Pontides. [4] [5] The method in which embrithopods reached the Orhaniye Basin is unclear. One thing is certain, in that vicariance is out of the question. The Orhaniye Basin ...
Herbivory is of extreme ecological importance and prevalence among insects.Perhaps one third (or 500,000) of all described species are herbivores. [4] Herbivorous insects are by far the most important animal pollinators, and constitute significant prey items for predatory animals, as well as acting as major parasites and predators of plants; parasitic species often induce the formation of galls.
Aetosaurs were herbivores and some developed extensive armor. A few crocodyliforms were herbivores, e.g., Simosuchus, Phyllodontosuchus. The large crocodyliform Stomatosuchus may have been a filter feeder. Sauropodomorphs and ornithischian dinosaurs were herbivores with diverse adaptations for feeding biomechanics.
The marsupials remained the dominant Australian mammals, with herbivore forms including wombats and kangaroos, and the huge Diprotodon. Carnivorous marsupials continued hunting in the Pliocene, including dasyurids, the dog-like thylacine and cat-like Thylacoleo. The first rodents arrived in Australia. The modern platypus, a monotreme, appeared.
Crocodylomorpha is a group of pseudosuchian archosaurs that includes the crocodilians and their extinct relatives. They were the only members of Pseudosuchia to survive the end-Triassic extinction.