Palaeontology

Palaeo: A prefix common in geological terminology, meaning ‘ancient, of past times’, and sometimes suggesting an
early primitive nature
Ontology : is the philosophical study of the nature of being, existence or reality as such, as well as the basic categories
of being and their relations. ontology deals with questions concerning what entities exist or can be said to exist, and how
such entities can be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences.
Paleontology is the science which deals with studying life of past geologic ages (fossils). It is the study of ancient
animal life and how it developed. It is divided into two subdisciplines, invertebrate paleontology and vertebrate
paleontology. Paleontologists use two lines of evidence to learn about ancient animals. One is to examine animals that
live today, and the other is to study fossils. The study of modern animals includes looking at the earliest stages of
development and the way growth occurs (embryology), and comparing different organisms to see how they are related
evolutionarily (cladistics). The fossils that paleontologists study may be the actual remains of the organisms, or simply
traces the animals have left (tracks or burrows left in fine sediments). Paleontology lies at the boundary of the life
sciences and the earth sciences. It is thus useful for dating sediments, reconstructing ancient environments, and testing
models of plate tectonics, as well as understanding how modern animals are related to one another.
An invertebrate is essentially a multicellular animal that lacks a spinal column encased in vertebrae and a distinct skull.

Fossils: are remains or traces of organisms (animals and plants), which inhabited the globe since the beginning of life.
Kinds of fossils:
Real fossils: are the remnant of an extinct plant or animal.
 Range fossils: are those having long range and so can’t be used as time indicators.
 Index (guide) fossils: are fossils which are characterized by wide geographic distribution, short range, should be
common, readily preserved, easily recognizable, spread rapidly and they should have evolved rapidly so that
individual species existed during only a short interval of time. They are useful in designating the age of strata.
Derived (drifted) fossil: are fossils that are washed out from the original beds and re-deposited in younger strata.
Example: Cretaceous and Eocene fossils deposited in the Miocene basins of the Gulf of Suez.
Pseudo-fossils: are those covered by sediments in recent times and make the impression only of being fossils.

Nature of fossil record:

All fossils should occur in sedimentary rocks being abundant in limestone and limy shale but rare in sandstone. Fossils
never occur in igneous rocks except when volcanic ash falls or nearly cooled lava have overcome plants and animals. In
Metamorphic rocks they are also absent except when these rocks were originally fossiliferous and subjected to very low
grades of metamorphism. In Nature fossils are found scattered in the rocks, in some cases they are accumulated in layers
or patches. Those accumulated in layers or beds are called Biostroms whereas those accumulated without any
distinctive layering are called Bioherms. Fossils are one of the most important sources of information about the Earth's
past. They can tell us the age of the rocks in which they are found, what the environment was like when the fossilised
organisms were alive, and even how the organisms functioned. They can also tell us about Earth movements, such as
mountain building, about the former positions of continents (ancient geography), and about the evolution of life on
Earth. Some of these uses for fossils are of economic importance, assisting in the search for oil and minerals.

Fossils as age indicators

Fossils are the most important means of dating sedimentary rock sequences. However, they do not provide an absolute
age measured in years, but rather a relative age expressed in terms of the relative geological time scale. The use of
fossils in this way relies on the fact that individual species evolved into others through time, so that if the time range of
a species is known in one particular region, the occurrence of the same species in another region indicates that the rocks
there are of the same age. This process of establishing the equivalence in age of two rock sequences in different areas is
called correlation.
Not all fossils are of equal value in dating rocks; the most useful are called index or zone fossils. Ideally, index fossils
should be common, readily preserved and easily recognisable. They should have spread rapidly and widely, and for
accuracy of dating, they should have evolved rapidly so that individual species existed during only a short interval of
time. Very few index fossils meet all of these criteria. Amongst the most important index fossils are graptolites,
ammonites, foraminifera, pollen, conodonts and trilobites.
One of the most important groups of index fossils in the Palaeozoic rocks of Victoria is the graptolites. These were
extinct marine animals that formed twig-like colonies composed of one or more branches. The colonies were originally
three dimensional but usually became completely flattened during fossilisation, though they are still easily recognisable.
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Some graptolite colonies may have been attached to the sea floor, but most floated freely in the sea. They are of most
use in dating rocks ranging in age from Early Ordovician to Early Devonian.
The Ordovician rocks of central and eastern Victoria have one of the richest and most diverse graptolite faunas in the
world. They have been used to subdivide the rock sequences into 30 intervals, and to correlate these intervals accurately
with other sequences in New Zealand, Asia, Europe and North America.

Fossils as environmental indicators

Because fossils are the remains of once living organisms that were adapted to their environments, they can provide
valuable information about what past environments were like. We can predict the environmental requirements of
organisms in the past from those of closely related organisms living in the present day. Such predictions will be most
reliable in the case of younger rocks which contain fossils having representatives alive today. As we go further back in
geological time, the predictions become less reliable because we encounter fossils of extinct groups about whose
environmental requirements nothing is directly known.
The environmental information obtained from fossils may be as simple as whether the rocks in which they occur were
deposited in the sea, in a brackish water estuary, in fresh water, or on the land. For example, rocks containing fossils of
corals, brachiopods, cephalopods or echinoderms must have been deposited in the sea because living representatives of
those groups are found only in the sea today; and fossils of land-dwelling animals such as kangaroos indicate deposition
on land or in an adjacent body of fresh water.
Fossils of reef-building corals indicate that the rocks in which they occur were deposited in warm, shallow seas because,
at the present day, reef-forming corals are found in tropical seas and only at depths of less that 200 m where sunlight
can penetrate the water to reach the photosynthesising algae within their cells.
The Koonwarra fossil bed of South Gippsland provides a good example of the use of fossils in reconstructing an ancient
environment. This fossil bed contains fossilised fish, plants, insects, crustaceans, spiders, bird feathers and a horseshoe
crab. There are also bryozoans and a mussel. These fossils tell us that the deposit was formed in the shallow part of a
large freshwater lake because the insects include mayflies that are similar to forms living today in cool mountain
streams and lakes in Tasmania. The lake may have been frozen in winter because the mass occurrence of fish fossils
show no signs of rotting. This conclusion is supported to some extent by the occurrence of a beetle that is similar to a
modern species found only in alpine areas. The occurrence of fleas in the fossil fauna suggests that mammals may have
been present on the adjacent land, and the occurrence of feathers shows that birds were also present. The small size of
the fish suggests that they were juveniles or small adults, which inhabit shallow areas in modern bodies of fresh water.
The insects are well preserved, even those that were not aquatic, suggesting that they were not transported great
distances after death, so that the fossil deposits must have been formed close to the edge of the body of water.

Fossils as indicators of Earth movements

The occurrence of fossils at a particular locality may provide evidence that there has been some movement of the Earth's
crust since the fossils were deposited. The movement may have been only slight uplift of the land, as indicated, for
example, by the occurrence of fossils of marine shells in cliffs around Port Phillip Bay. Alternatively, the uplift may
have been on a much larger scale, as indicated by the occurrence of marine fossils far from present-day oceans and even
in the middle of continents, or on high mountains, such as the Himalayas or the European Alps. Movement of the
Earth's crust along faults or fractures may be indicated, even if the fracture itself is not evident, by the occurrence of
fossils of very different ages at adjacent localities. For example, the Whitelaw Fault on the eastern outskirts of Bendigo
is not marked by any obvious landform, but its presence is indicated by the occurrence of graptolites of Middle
Ordovician age (about 470 million years old) on one side of the fault, in close proximity to Early Ordovician graptolites
(about 493 million years old) on the other side.

Fossils as indicators of ancient geography

As long ago as the middle of the eighteenth century, it became apparent to some palaeontologists that there were
sometimes striking similarities in the assemblages of fossils found in rocks of the same age in widely separated
continents. The similarities could not be satisfactorily explained by the migration of organisms across vast expanses of
ocean, because the fossils belonged to forms that lived only in shallow marine environments, in fresh water, or even on
dry land. A few scientists suggested that these similarities were due to the fact that the continents were once joined
together and later split apart, but this suggestion was rejected by most geologists because at that time there was no
known mechanism by which the continents could move. The favoured explanation then was that organisms had
migrated across 'land bridges', which had connected the continents in ancient times but which had later subsided to form
part of the present-day ocean floor. We now know that this could not have occurred, because the Earth's crust on the
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floor of the oceans differs in composition from that of the continents. With the development of the theory of plate
tectonics in the 1960s, leading to the widespread acceptance of continental drift, the similarities in the fossil faunas in
different continents could be readily explained by the drifting apart of land masses that formerly lay together.
One example of the fossil evidence that the continents were connected in the past is the distribution of the ancient seed-
fern Glossopteris and related plants. The fossils of these plants are associated with coal deposits of Permian age in India,
Australia, South Africa, South America and Antarctica. The rock sequences in which these coal deposits occur are
remarkably similar on all of these continents. The distribution of these plants cannot be explained by wind dispersal of
their seeds, as these are too large to have been carried across the ocean. A further line of evidence is the distribution of
the reptile Mesosaurus, which is found in Brazil and South Africa at or near the Carboniferous-Permian boundary.
Mesosaurus lived in fresh or perhaps brackish water habitats, so it is difficult to imagine that it could have found its way
across an ocean as broad as the present day Atlantic.

Fossils as evidence for the evolution of life

Fossils are the main sources of information on the evolution of life on Earth. Without the information they provide, we
would have no knowledge of extinct organisms such as trilobites and dinosaurs, and our knowledge of the history of the
development and evolutionary relationships of the modern flora and fauna could be derived only from the living
organisms themselves. We would also have no direct knowledge of the timing of critical biological events, such as the
origin of life, the development of shells or skeletons, the colonisation of the land, the appearance of mammals and
flowering plants, the development of flight, and major episodes of extinction.
The role that fossils have played in deciphering relationships among organisms can be demonstrated by the evolution of
horses, the family of mammals with probably the best fossil record. The development of the modern horse from its
oldest known ancestors can be traced via a number of morphological changes, including body size, shape of teeth, and
the structure of the feet. These morphological changes reflect changes in habitat and feeding, from browsing on soft
leaves in forests to grazing on hard grasses on open plains. The oldest known horse, Hyracotherium, lived during the
early Eocene (about 50 million years ago). It was a dog-sized creature with short-crowned teeth, and with four toes on
the front feet and three toes on the back feet, each toe having a small hoof. In descendants of Hyracotherium, there was
a progressive increase in body size, to the size of the modern horse. The teeth developed long crowns with complex
enamel ridges for grinding hard grasses, and the number of toes was progressively reduced to one on both front and hind
feet.

Conditions of preservation
1-possession of hard skeleton: In order to be preserved as fossil, the organism must have a hard skeleton. The soft parts
decay after death and only the hard parts are preserved
2-Rapid burial: After death, the organism should be directly covered with sediments to prevent its destruction by waves
or winds. On land, rapid burial is not common and hence land organisms have little chance of preservation than marine
organisms.

Chemical and mineralogical composition:

The hard parts of vertebrates include bones (largely calcium phosphate and carbonate).
Invertebrate skeletons are mainly calcium carbonate (either calcite or aragonite), some skeletons are composed of silica
(siliceous). The composition of major invertebrate groups is as follow:

Foraminifera: Calcareous (Ca CO3) or agglutinated (sand grains, sponge spicules or mica flakes).
Sponge: calcareous (CaCO3) and siliceous (silica).
Coelenterates: calcareous.
Bryozoa: calcareous.
Brachiopods: Calcareous and chitinophosphatic.
Mollusca: calcareous.
Echinoderms: calcareous.

Modes of preservation:
After death, the organisms are preserved in different forms as follows:
I. Unaltered remains: the hard skeleton of the organism or its soft part or both remains unchanged.
Soft part (organic compounds):
1- Mammoth: in the Pleistocene glaciers of Siberia.
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2-Insect in Amber: the insects are preserved in the resin (Amber) such as those found in the Oligocene deposits of Baltic
province.

Hard skeleton (inorganic compounds):

This is characteristic for Cenozoic shells which underwent little or no alteration of the original mineral substance.

II. Altered remains: The soft parts decay and the hard skeletons are completely altered. This takes the following forms:
Carbonization: This is the removal of volatile constituents such as oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen from the organic
compound leaving only carbon as a thin black film. Ex. Graptolites, fishes and plants
Recrystallization: is the alteration of less stable inorganic compounds (e.g. aragonite) into more stable ones (e.g. calcite)
without any chemical change.
3- Permineralization: is the deposition of minerals in the interstices of skeleton. Ex. Bone vertebra
4- Replacement: The original skeleton is removed and replaced by other mineral substances such as silica
(silicification), pyrite, iron or carbonates. Ex. Silicified wood (stone forests)
5-Imprints, casts and Moulds: Imprints: are impression made by thin objects such as fish. Ex. Fish imprint
Cast: is the filling of cavities of shells by minerals or other sediments.
Mould: is the impression of skeletal remains on rocks. The impression may represent the external or internal surface of
the organism.
6- Evidence of the activity: here we don’t have anything of the body fossil itself but only traces of its movement. This
branch of paleontology is called Ichnology, which deals with traces of organisms.

Tracks: These are the traces of feet made by quadrepedal or bipedal vertebrates during moving on soft sediments.
Trails: These are the traces made by animals during crawling on sediments.
Burrows: are pathways made up by animals in soft sediments as a normal way of life (worm burrows).
Borings: are holes made by animals in hard rocks and shells either for protection or as parasites in search for food.
Excrements: these are called coprolites and they indicate the kind of food, which the organism had eaten.

Marine Environments
As mentioned before, fossils are mostly found in marine rocks rather than continental ones since they had a better
chance of preservation. The marine environment (sea or ocean) is divided into zones, each has its own physical and
chemical characteristics.

Littoral (Tidal) zone: This is the zone of water between highest and lowest tide. Living conditions are difficult because
of alternate covering and exposure of the bottom materials and organisms due to tidal effect. In spite of that; some
organisms adapt themselves to live in these conditions. These are mainly attached or burrowing organisms such as
corals, worms, pelecypods, burrowing crustaceans together with lime-secreting algae.

Neritic zone: It is the zone of water between lowest tide and 200 m depth (edge of the continental shelf). Organisms are
abundant due to excellent light, oxygen and agitated water. This allows plants to grow and produce food by
photosynthesis for animals living in this zone.
The majority of invertebrate fossil assemblages appear to have flourished upon the bottoms of the neritic zone. Also
much of invertebrate evolution is thought to have take place upon the continental shelves of ancient seas.

Bathyal zone: It is the zone of water between 200 m and 4000 m. Only the upper part of this zone has some light and so
there is little or no plant life. The inner part of this zone contains remains of neritic and even continental organisms
transported by turbidity currents.

Abyssal zone: It is the zone of water between 4000 m and 5000 m. Water is dark and cold, pressure is very great. There
is no green plant life beside little animal life. Remains of pelagic organisms called oozes are dominantly accumulated on
the bottom of this zone. There are two types of these oozes:
Foraminiferal (Globigerina) ooze: This consists of complete or broken tests of planktonic foraminifera.
Radiolarian Ooze: This consists of siliceous tests of Radiolaria beside other remains of siliceous composition such as
diatoms.

Hadal zone: It is the zone of water below 5000 m depth (deep sea trenches).
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Habit (mode of life) of marine organisms:
Organisms are classified according to their mode of life into three categories:
Planktonic: these are organisms which have no organs of locomotion and their movement is controlled by waves and
currents. Upon death they sink to sea floor or may be washed ashore. Examples: Diatoms, foraminifera, radiolaria and
some ostracods.
Nektonic: are organisms which swim in water by their possession of organs of locomotion, so they can control their
rmovement. Ex. Fishes and some mollusca.
Benthonic: are organisms which inhabit sea bottom. There are two types:
Epifaunal: living on sea bottom either sessile (fixed) or vagrant (free moving).
Infaunal: living buried within the sediments.

There are about 30 phyla, or groups, of invertebrates, and roughly 20 of these have been preserved as fossils. Still
other phyla probably existed, but are not represented in the fossil record because the animals' soft bodies were not
preserved. Only one invertebrate phylum is known to have become extinct—the Archaeocyathida. These organisms,
which were superficially similar to sponges, did not survive past the Middle Cambrian period (530 million years ago).
The different body plans of invertebrates most likely evolved during the Precambrian, between 1,000 and 700 million
years ago. There was an "explosion" of invertebrate evolution in the Lower Cambrian (beginning about 570 million
years ago), which lasted perhaps only 10 million years. During this time the different phyla, including those existing
today, developed. Meanwhile, the glaciers from a Proterozoic ice age were melting, raising sea levels above the
continental shelves. This gave invertebrates more places to live. There are no fossils showing how the first invertebrates
evolved; they just suddenly appear in the fossil record. This may be because they were evolving so quickly, and because
they developed hard shells, allowing them to be preserved. Many organisms from this period were preserved in the
Burgess Shale formation (530 million years ago) in British Columbia, Canada.
The sponges (phylum Porifera) appeared in the Middle Cambrian. The bodies of these "lower" invertebrates are neither
symmetrical nor differentiated into tissues. Sponges are less evolutionarily advanced than members of the phylum
Cnidaria, which includes jellyfish, corals, and sea anemones. These two phyla may have arisen directly and
independently from the protists (simple one celled organisms such as bacteria, algae, etc.).
The appearance of bilateral symmetry (two halves which are mirror images of each other) was an important
evolutionary breakthrough. The most primitive bilaterally symmetrical animals are the flatworms (phylum
Platyhelminthes). Platyhelminthes gave rise to the coelomates, which have a coelom, or internal body cavity. The
coelomates split into two evolutionary lines, the protostomes (molluscs, annelids, and arthropods) and the
deuterostomes (echinoderms and chordates). A few phyla, such as the phylum Bryozoa, are intermediate between the
two lines. Of the nearly 20,000 species of bryozoans known, only 3,500 are still living.
The molluscs are a very diverse group of invertebrates. They include snails, chitons, and cephalopods (squids and
octopuses). Recent studies of invertebrate genetic material has shown that molluscs and annelids (segmented worms)
probably evolved from arthropods. Neopilina, which was discovered in 1957, is a modern, "primitive mollusc." It is
similar to what the first molluscs are believed to have looked like. One of the main reasons molluscs have evolved so
many different forms is that they have diverse methods of eating and of avoiding being eaten.
The arthropods (jointed foot) are the most successful group of organisms ever. They include centipedes, insects,
crustaceans, horseshoe crabs, spiders, scorpions, and the extinct trilobites and eurypterids. Arthropods evolved 630
million years ago. The trilobites lived for 350 million years, from the Lower Cambrian to the Late Permian, and
developed into over 1500 genera. They had compound eyes with thin, biconvex lenses made of calcite. The last of the
trilobites died out at the end of the Permian. The eurypterids were ancient water-scorpions. Most eurypterids were less
than 7.9 in (20 cm) long, but some giant forms grew nearly 6.5 ft (2 m) long, making them the largest arthropods ever.
Insects colonized the land just after plants did, about 410 million years ago. Cockroaches and dragonflies appeared over
300 million years ago, and for the next 100 million years, insects were the only animals that could fly. The chelicerates
(spiders, mites, scorpions, horseshoe crabs, and eurypterids) evolved in the Cambrian.
The echinoderms (phylum Echinodermata) include starfish, sea-urchins, sea cucumbers, and crinoids. A great many of
these organisms were fossilized because they have skeletons made of calcite plates. The greatest number of different
genera of echinoderms lived during the Carboniferous (360-286 million years ago). The embryology of modern
echinoderms suggests that they are related to the chordates. Modern echinoderm larvae have a ciliated band that runs
along both sides of their bodies. The "dipleurula theory" suggests that ancient adult echinoderms had this band also, and
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that in the ancestors of the chordates, it fused along the back to form the beginnings of the dorsal nerve. Pikaia , a
worm-like creature found in the Burgess Shale, is the oldest known chordate. It lived in the Middle Cambrian (about
530 million years ago).

Vertebrates are a subphylum of the Chordata (chordates). Lower vertebrates have a notochord, which is a flexible
cartilage rod that runs along their backs; this is replaced in higher vertebrates with a vertebral column. Vertebrates are
also called craniate chordates because they are the only animals with a distinct cranium (skull). The oldest known
vertebrate remains date from the Upper Cambrian and Lower Ordovician (around 505 million years ago).
The first vertebrates were fishes. They evolved primarily during the Devonian (408-360 million years ago). The earliest
fishes did not have jaws. Unlike modern jawless fishes (hagfishes and lampreys), the extinct forms were heavily
armored and had pairs of fins. Jaws may have evolved from gill arches near the head, but there are no transition fossils
which show this. Rays and sharks, which have skeletons of cartilage instead of bone, are the most ancient living fishes
with jaws. Bony fishes, such as coelacanths and the ancestors of most modern fresh and saltwater fishes, probably
evolved early in the Devonian. Coelacanths were believed to be extinct until a living one was discovered in 1938 in the
Indian Ocean. Fishes thrived until the Late Devonian (360 million years ago), when a mass extinction wiped out 76% of
fish families.
The amphibians were the first vertebrates to leave the seas for dry land. They evolved from fishes about 360 million
years ago. One of the challenges to living on land is that animals must be able to support their own weight rather than
simply allowing water to support them. The lobed fins of the bony fishes already contained the major bones that became
the limbs of the early tetrapods (four feet); many of these bones are still used in our own limbs today.
The earliest-known amphibian was the Ichthyostega. It and other early tetrapods probably ate invertebrates such as
cockroaches and spiders, as well as little fishes. The diadectomorphs appear to have been somewhat transitional
between amphibians and reptiles. They belong to a category of amphibians called reptiliomorphs (as opposed to the
batrachomorphs, or "true" amphibians).
The first reptiles, which were about the size of small lizards, emerged about 300 million years ago. They had a crucial
advantage over amphibians in that their eggs could hatch on land, freeing them from spending part of their lives in the
water. Among these early reptiles were the ancestors of modern birds and mammals. The pelycosaurs were the most
varied of the Early Permian reptiles. Some had tall, skin-covered "sails" that may have helped regulate their body
temperature. The main herbivores in the Late Permian were the dicynodonts, and the main carnivores were the
gorgonopsians such as Arctognathus. Arctognathus had huge canines and could open its jaws 90°. The ancestors of the
crocodilians arose in the late Triassic. Terrestrisuchus was small (1.64 ft [0.5 m] long), probably ate insects and small
reptiles, and may have walked bipedally on its long hind legs. Unlike its descendants, it did not live in the water.
Triassic oceans were filled with placodonts, nothosaurs, and ichthyosaurs . Placodonts had heavy teeth, which were
probably used to crush the hard shells of mollusks. Nothosaurs had pointed teeth in their small heads, and may have
eaten fish. Ichthyosaurs (fish lizards) were shaped somewhat like giant porpoises with long, narrow jaws. They grew up
to 49 ft (15 m) long in the Late Triassic, but were smaller during the Jurassic and Cretaceous. Plesiosaurs, along with
ichthyosaurs, ruled the Jurassic and Cretaceous seas . Plesiosaurs were probably related to nothosaurs. Their paddles,
however, were flat and like an airplane wing in cross-section, so that these animals may have moved through the water
by "flying," the way penguins and sea turtles do.
The largest mass extinction of all time occurred at the end of the Permian (248-238 million years ago). All but about ten
tetrapod families died out, as well as 96% of marine species. The dinosaurs arose in the Late Triassic (230 million years
ago). The earliest dinosaurs walked upright on two legs and were carnivorous. Dinosaurs are divided into two groups,
the Saurischia and the Ornithischia, based on their hips. The saurischians had "lizard hips" and the ornithischians had
"bird hips." The lizard hips arose first; Triassic dinosaurs were saurischians. While saurischians included both
carnivores (meat eaters) and herbivores (plant eaters), all of the ornithischians were herbivores. The carnivorous
saurischians are known as the theropods. They included the Late Jurassic Allosaurus and Late Cretaceous
Tyrannosaurus, which probably was the largest carnivore ever to walk the earth. Brachiosaurus was a herbivorous
saurischian. This sauropod had a long neck and short, thick legs like an elephant's, which were designed for bearing its
enormous weight. There were two kinds of bird-hipped dinosaurs, the Late Cretaceous Cerapoda and the Late Jurassic
Thyreophora. The former included hadrosaurs (duck-billed dinosaurs) and ceratopsians ("horned faces"), and the latter
included ankylosaurs and stegosaurs.
One of the major debates among paleontologists is whether or not dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Some scientists
suggest that a four-chambered heart would have been necessary to pump blood up the long necks of the sauropods to
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their brains. Mammals and birds, which are warm-blooded, have four-chambered hearts, but so do the cold-blooded
crocodilians. The debate has not been conclusively resolved.
There are two main models that attempt to explain the success of the dinosaurs. According to one, dinosaurs out-
competed the mammal-like reptiles over a long period of time due to superior adaptations such as upright walking. The
other model, which is supported by fossil evidence, says that the dinosaurs took advantage of openings created by two
mass extinctions. By the end of the Triassic, dinosaurs had taken over the land. They were dominant for 165 million
years, from the Late Triassic until their extinction at the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary some 65 million years ago.
This massive extinction may have taken place in only a week or lasted for tens of thousands of years; this has not been
determined yet, but further study may provide an answer. One prominent theory for the cause of this event is that a
meteorite hit the earth 65 million years ago, creating a cloud of dust which obscured the sun and prevented
photosynthesis for several months. This set off a chain reaction which culminated in the death of many life forms on
Earth.
The pterosaurs (winged reptiles) were closely related to the dinosaurs, and lived at the same time . They had short
bodies with long necks, and pointed jaws. They ranged from the pigeon-sized Eudimorphodon to the largest of all flying
creatures, Quetzalcoatlus, which is believed to have had a wing span of up to 49 ft (15 m). Thanks to some well-
preserved pterosaurs, we know they had hair, and were therefore possibly warm-blooded.
Birds evolved from the theropod dinosaurs. The first bird, Archaeopteryx , lived in the Late Jurassic (150 million years
ago). This small, magpie-sized bird had sharp teeth on both jaws, and feathers. The presence of teeth, claws on the
fingers, and its bony tail are reptilian characteristics, whereas the feathers and "wishbone" (fused collarbones) are bird
characteristics.
The ancestors of mammals were mammal-like reptiles called cynodonts. Cynodonts arose in the Late Permian (about
245 million years ago). Some were dogsized carnivores, and others were herbivores. One way the transition to
mammals can be seen is in the manner in which the jaws are joined. Mammals have a new joint not present in reptile
jaws, which allows for the side-to-side action of chewing. The earliest true mammals appeared in the Late Triassic (230
million years ago). One was the tiny, shrew-like Megazostrodon. Because of its size and the fact that it had pointed
teeth, it was probably an insectivore. Mammals radiated widely in the Paleocene Epoch (66-58 million years ago),
taking advantage of the openings left by the dinosaurs when they died out. The mammals were intelligent and took care
of their young for an extended period of time, which probably gave them an edge over other animals. Mammals now
appear in many very different forms, including the orders Insectivora (shrews), Carnivora (cats, dogs, seals), Chiroptera
(bats), Cetacea (whales), Proboscidea (elephants), Tubulidentata (aardvarks), and Primates.

KEY TERMS

Cladistics—the study of evolutionary relationships between organisms based on analysis of the similarities and
differences of their physical traits, that is, based on evolutionary divergence.
Coelom—an internal body cavity in which the digestive organs are suspended.
Embryology—the study of the development and early growth of living organisms.
Extinction—the condition in which all members of a group of organisms have ceased to exist.
Invertebrate—a multicellular animal that lacks a spinal column encased in vertebrae and a distinct skull.
Notochord—A flexible cartilage rod that runs along the back in chordates.
Phylum—a taxonomic division of animals, one level below kingdom in the taxonomic hierarchy (plural: phyla).
Vertebrate—includes all animals with a vertebral column protecting the spinal cord such as humans, dogs, birds, lizards,
and fish.

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