How To Use therapsid In A Sentence
- The first fossil reptiles from the Karoo were found in the 1850s by Andrew Geddes Bain and were the first specimens of a new group of ‘reptiles’ called the therapsids, which were recognized as being the distant ancestors of mammals.
- Whether or not his reconstruction corresponds to an actual creature, it at least represents a good morphotype for slightly more derived, but still primitive, therapsids from the Late Permian.
- In all but the role of small insectivore, omnivore, and rodent-like herbivore, the therapsids were eventually supplanted by the archosaurs.
- These included more advanced therapsids such the cynodonts.
- Following the extinction of the Permian therapsids due to the end Permian-extinction, most of the large animals that populated Pangea were archosaurs or archosauromorphs.
- It is even seen in a group of therapsids (ancestors of mammals), the tritylodonts, which lived during the Jurassic.
- Indeed, most workers recognized a geographical and temporal gap between Permo-Carboniferous ‘pelycosaurs’ and therapsid synapsids.
- The dicynodonts as a whole lasted some 50 million years, and the only group of therapsids to outlive them were the cynodonts, which were the direct ancestors of the mammals.
- One group of therapsids, the dicynodonts, were herbivores with a worldwide distribution.
- Consequently, lung ventilation rates and, by extension, metabolic rates of the earliest mammals, and at least some Triassic Period therapsids, are likely to have approached or been equal to those of extant mammals.
