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The early synapsids spread and diversified, becoming the largest terrestrial animals in the latest Carboniferous and Early Permian periods, ranging up to 6 metres (20 ft) in length. They were sprawling, bulky, possibly cold-blooded, and had small brains. Some, such as Dimetrodon, had large sails that might have helped raise their body temperature.
Warm-blooded is a term referring to animal species whose bodies maintain a temperature higher than that of their environment. In particular, homeothermic species (including birds and mammals ) maintain a stable body temperature by regulating metabolic processes.
Dimetrodon (/ d aɪ ˈ m iː t r ə ˌ d ɒ n / ⓘ [1] or / d aɪ ˈ m ɛ t r ə ˌ d ɒ n /; [2] lit. ' two measures of teeth ') is an extinct genus of non-mammalian synapsid belonging to the family Sphenacodontidae that lived during the Cisuralian age of the Early Permian period, around 295–272 million years ago.
An ectotherm (from the Greek ἐκτός (ektós) "outside" and θερμός (thermós) "heat"), more commonly referred to as a "cold-blooded animal", [1] is an animal in which internal physiological sources of heat, such as blood, are of relatively small or of quite negligible importance in controlling body temperature. [2]
Cold-blooded animals, including reptiles like snakes and lizards, depend on outside sources to control their temperature: For example, basking in the sun to warm up. Knowing when dinosaurs evolved their stable internal thermometer could help scientists answer other questions about how they lived, including how active and social they were. To ...
Dinosaurs were initially cold-blooded, but global warming 180 million years ago may have triggered the evolution of warm-blooded species, a new study found.
But scientists observed differences between the two big groups of dinosaurs, finding that Triceratops were cold-blooded and T-Rex warm-blooded.
Endothermy is seen today in mammals, the only living group of therapsids. Reptiles , the closest living relatives of mammals, are cold-blooded ectotherms with lower metabolic rates. Endothermic animals likely evolved from more primitive ectothermic synapsids sometime in the Permian or Triassic .