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Very soon after the first reptiles appeared, they split into two branches. [14] One branch, Synapsida (including modern mammals), had one opening in the skull roof behind each eye. The other branch, Sauropsida, is itself divided into two main groups. One of them, the aforementioned Parareptilia, contained taxa with anapsid-like skull, as well ...
Early in the period, the modern reptiles, or crown-group reptiles, evolved and split into two main lineages: the Archosauromorpha (forebears of turtles, crocodiles, and dinosaurs) and the Lepidosauromorpha (predecessors of modern lizards and tuataras). Both groups remained lizard-like and relatively small and inconspicuous during the Permian.
They almost immediately diverged into two groups, namely the sauropsids (including all reptiles and birds) and synapsids (including mammals and extinct ancestors like "pelycosaurs" and therapsids).
Genetic and fossil data argues that the two largest lineages of reptiles, Archosauromorpha (crocodilians, birds, and kin) and Lepidosauromorpha (lizards, and kin), diverged during the Permian period. In addition to the living reptiles, there are many diverse groups that are now extinct, in some cases due to mass extinction events.
Climate change is shaping the way animals evolve, be it the way they look or behave. Similarly, climate warming that occurred millions of years ago helped reptiles evolve faster, diversify, and ...
Sauropsida (Greek for "lizard faces") is a clade of amniotes, broadly equivalent to the class Reptilia, though typically used in a broader sense to also include extinct stem-group relatives of modern reptiles and birds (which, as theropod dinosaurs, are nested within reptiles as more closely related to crocodilians than to lizards or turtles). [2]
Pterosaurs, cousins of the dinosaurs, were the first of three vertebrate groups to achieve powered flight, followed by birds about 150 million years ago and bats around 50 million years ago.
A Brazilian scientist has identified fossils of a small crocodile-like reptile that lived during the Triassic Period several million years before the first dinosaurs. The fossils of the predator ...