Vertebrate paleontology

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Vertebrate paleontology

Vertebrate paleontology seeks to discover the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct animals with vertebra

Vertebra

A vertebra is an individual bone in the flexible column that defines vertebrate animals. The vertebral column encases and protects the spinal cord, which runs from the base of the cranium down the dorsal side of the animal until reaching the pelvis....
e or a notochord

Notochord

The notochord is a flexible, rod-shaped body found in embryos of all chordates. It is composed of cell s derived from the mesoderm and defines the primitive axis of the embryo....
, through the study of their fossil

Fossil

Fossils are the preserved remains or trace fossil of animals, plants, and other organisms from the remote past. The totality of fossils, both discovered and undiscovered, and their placement in fossiliferous Rock formations and sedimentary rock layers is known as the fossil record....
ized remains. It also tries to connect, by using the evolution

Evolution

In biology, evolution is change in the heritability trait of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. These changes are caused by a combination of three main processes: variation, reproduction, and selection....
ary timeline

Timeline of evolution

This timeline of the evolution of life outlines the major events in the development of life on the planet Earth . For a thorough explanatory context, see the history of Earth, and geologic time scale....
, the animals of the past and their modern-day relatives.

The fossil record clearly shows the evolutionary progression from early aquatic vertebrate

Vertebrate

Vertebrates are members of the subphylum Vertebrata, chordates with Vertebras or Vertebral columns. The grouping sometimes includes the hagfish, which have no vertebrae, but are genetically quite closely related to lampreys, which do have vertebrae....
s to mammal

Mammal

Mammals are a class of vertebrate animals whose name is derived from their distinctive feature, mammary glands, with which they feed their young....
s. The earliest known fossil vertebrates were heavily armored fish

Fish

A fish is any marine biology vertebrate animal that is typically ectothermic , covered with scale , and equipped with two sets of paired fins and several unpaired fins....
discovered in rocks from the Ordovician

Ordovician

The Ordovician is a geologic period, the second of six of the Paleozoic era , and covers the time between 488.3?1.7 to 443.7?1.5 million years ago ....
Period about 500 to 430 million years ago.

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Encyclopedia

Vertebrate paleontology seeks to discover the behavior, reproduction and appearance of extinct animals with vertebra

Vertebra

Notochord

Fossil

Evolution

Timeline of evolution

Vertebrate

Mammal

Fish

Ordovician

The Ordovician is a geologic period, the second of six of the Paleozoic era , and covers the time between 488.3?1.7 to 443.7?1.5 million years ago ....
Period about 500 to 430 million years ago. (The phrase 'million years ago' is shortened to 'mya' in most paleontological references). The Devonian

Devonian

The Devonian is a geologic period of the Paleozoic era spanning from . It is named after Devon, England, where rocks from this period were first studied....
Period (395 to 345 mya) brought in the changes that allowed primitive air-breathing fish to remain on land as long as they wished, thus becoming the first terrestrial vertebrates, the amphibian

Amphibian

Amphibians , such as frogs, toads, salamanders, newts and caecilians, are cold-blooded animals that metamorphose from a juvenile, water-breathing form to an adult, air-breathing form....
s.

Amphibians developed forms of reproduction and locomotion and a metabolism

Metabolism

Metabolism is the set of chemical reactions that occur in living organisms in order to maintain life. These processes allow organisms to grow and reproduce, maintain their structures, and respond to their environments....
better suited for life exclusively on land, becoming more reptilian

Reptile

Reptiles, or members of the class Reptilia, are air-breathing, cold-blooded vertebrates that have skin covered in scale as opposed to hair or feathers....
. Full fledged reptiles appeared in the Carboniferous

Carboniferous

The Carboniferous is a geologic period that extends from the end of the Devonian period, about 359.2 ? 2.5 annum , to the beginning of the Permian period, about 299.0 ? 0.8 Ma ...
Period (345 to 280 mya).

The reptilian changes and adaptations to diet and geography are chronicled in the fossil record of the varying forms of therapsida

Therapsida

Therapsids are an Order of synapsids ,and are believed to include mammals and their immediate evolutionary ancestors....
. True mammals showed up in the Triassic

Triassic

The Triassic is a geologic period that extends from about 251 to 199 annum . As the first period of the Mesozoic Era, the Triassic follows the Permian and is followed by the Jurassic....
Period (225 to 190 mya) around the same time as the dinosaur

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs were the dominant vertebrate animals of Landform ecosystems for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic Period until the end of the Cretaceous Period , when most of them became extinct in the Cretaceous?Tertiary extinction event....
s, which also sprouted from the reptilian line.

Bird

Bird

Birds are wing, Bipedalismal, endothermic , vertebrate animals that lay egg . There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates....
s appeared in the Jurassic

Jurassic

The Jurassic is a geologic period that extends from about annum to Ma, that is, from the end of the Triassic to the beginning of the Cretaceous....
Period (190 to 136 mya) from dinosaurs, as they were trying to find ways to adapt to their ever-changing world.

History

One of the people who helped figure out the vertebrate progression was French zoologist Georges Cuvier

Georges Cuvier

Baron Georges L?opold Chr?tien Fr?d?ric Dagobert Cuvier was a France natural history and zoology. He was the elder brother of Fr?d?ric Cuvier , also a naturalist....
(1769-1832) who realized that fossils found in older rock stratas differed greatly from more recent fossils or modern animals. He published his findings in 1812 and although he steadfastly refuted evolution

Evolution

Heresy

Heresy is an introduced change to some system of belief, especially a religion, that conflicts with the previously established canon of that belief....
theory of extinction

Extinction

In biology and ecology, extinction is the death of every member of a species or group of taxon. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species ....
of species.

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States , the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence , and one of the most influential Founding Fathers of the United States for his promotion of the ideals of republicanism in the United States....
is credited with initiating the science of vertebrate paleontology in the United States with the reading of a paper to the American Philosophical Society

American Philosophical Society

The American Philosophical Society is a discussion group founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin as an offshoot of his earlier club, the Junto....
in Philadelphia in 1797. Jefferson presented fossil bones of a ground sloth found in a cave in western Virginia and named the genus (Megalonyx
Megalonyx

Megalonyx is an extinct genus of ground sloth living from the Hemphillian of the Late Miocene through to the Rancholabrean of the Late Pleistocene ....
). The species was ultimately named Megalonyx jeffersonii in his honor..

Paleontology really got started though, with the publication of Recherches sur les poissons fossils (1833-1843) by Swiss naturalist Louis Agassiz

Louis Agassiz

Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz was a paleontologist, glaciologist, and geologist, and was a prominent innovator in the study of the earth's natural history....
(1807-1873). He studied, described and listed hundreds of species of fossil fish, beginning the serious study into the lives of extinct animals.

In modern times, some have said that Alfred Romer

Alfred Romer

Alfred Sherwood Romer was an American paleontologist and comparative anatomist and a specialist in vertebrate evolution....
(1894-1973) wrote the definitive textbook on the subject, called Vertebrate Paleontology, which shows the progression of evolution in fossil fish, and amphibians and reptiles through comparative anatomy. Romer became the first president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology

Society of Vertebrate Paleontology

The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology was founded in 1940 for individuals with an interest in vertebrate paleontology. SVP now has almost 2,000 members....
in 1940. Others would claim that the current definitive book on the subject was written by Robert L. Carroll

Robert L. Carroll

Robert Lynn Carroll is a vertebrate paleontologist who specialises in Paleozoic and Mesozoic amphibians and reptiles.Carroll was an only child and grew up on a farm near Lansing, Michigan....
of McGill University in his 1988 text Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution. Carroll was president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology in 1983. The Society keeps its members informed on the latest discoveries through newsletters and the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Paleontological Vertebrate Classification

This is a 'traditional' classification scheme, which can technically be described as paraphyletic. This means that the classification scheme does not necessarily represent the evolution

Evolution

Bird

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs were the dominant vertebrate animals of Landform ecosystems for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic Period until the end of the Cretaceous Period , when most of them became extinct in the Cretaceous?Tertiary extinction event....
s; but in this system both are listed as separate classes.

(For an alternative system see List of dinosaur classifications )

Kingdom Animalia

Phylum Chordata (vertebrates)

Class Agnatha
Agnatha

Agnatha is a class or superclass of jawless fish in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata. Many recent textbooks regard the group as paraphyletic but recent molecular data, both from rRNA and from mtDNA strongly supports living agnathans as monophyletic....
(jawless fish)
Class Placodermi
Placodermi

The Placodermi were a Class of armoured prehistoric fish, known from fossils, which lived from the late Silurian to the end of the Devonian Period....
(armoured fish)
Class Chondrichthys (sharks)
Class Osteichthys (bony fish)
Class Amphibia
Class Reptilia

Subclass Anapsida

Order Cotylosauria
Order Chelonia

Subclass Synapsida

Order Pelycosauria
Order Therapsida
Therapsida

Therapsids are an Order of synapsids ,and are believed to include mammals and their immediate evolutionary ancestors....

Subclass Euryapsida
Euryapsida

Euryapsida is a polyphyletic group of reptiles that are distinguished by a single temporal fenestra, an opening behind the orbit , under which the post-orbital and squamosal bones articulate....

Order Sauropterygia
Sauropterygia

Sauropterygia is a group of very successful aquatic reptiles that flourished during the Mesozoic before they became extinct. They are united by a radical adaptation of their shoulder, designed to support powerful flipper strokes....
Order Ichthyosauria

Subclass Diapsida (lizards & snakes too)

Order Thecodonta
Order Crocodilia
Crocodilia

Crocodilia is an order of large reptiles that appeared about 84 million years ago in the late Cretaceous Period . They are the closest living relatives of birds, as the two groups are the only known survivors of the Archosauria....
(corcodiles, alligators etc)
Order Saurischia
Saurischia

Saurischia is one of the two Order s, or basic divisions, of dinosaurs. In 1888, Harry Seeley classified dinosaurs into two orders, based on their hip structure....
(dinosaurs)
Order Ornithischiaa (dinosaurs)

Class Aves
Class Mammalia

Subclass Prototheria
Prototheria

Prototheria is a taxonomic group, or taxon, to which the order monotreme belongs. It is conventionally ranked as a Subclass within the mammals....

Order Monotremata (platypus
Platypus

The Platypus is a semi-aquatic mammal Endemic to Eastern states of Australia, including Tasmania. Together with the four species of echidna, it is one of the five extant species of monotremes, the only mammals that lay Egg instead of giving birth to live young....
and the echidna]s)

Subclass Theria
Theria

Theria is a Scientific classification of mammals that give birth to live young without using a shelled egg , including both eutherians and metatherians ....

Infraclass Metatheria
Metatheria

Metatheria is a grouping within the animal class Mammalia. First proposed by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1880, it is nearly synonymous with the earlier taxon Marsupialia though it is slightly wider since it also contains the nearest fossil relatives of marsupial mammals....

Order Marsupialia (kangaroos, dunnarts, opposums, wombats etc)

Infraclass Eutheria
Eutheria

Eutheria are a group of mammals consisting of placental mammals plus all extinct mammals that are more closely related to living placentals than to living marsupials ....
(placentals)

Order Insectivora
Insectivora

The Order Insectivora is a now-abandoned biological grouping within the class of mammals.In the past, the grouping was used as a scrapbasket for a variety of small to very small, relatively unspecialised, insectivorous mammals....
Order Chiroptera (bats)
Order Creodonta
Creodonta

The creodonts are an extinct order of mammals that lived from the Paleocene to the Miocene epochs. They shared a common ancestor with the Carnivora....
Order Carnivora
Carnivora

The diverse Order Carnivora includes over 260 species of eutheria mammals. Its members are formally referred to as carnivorans, while the word "carnivore" can refer to any meat-eating animal....
(dogs/cats)
Order Perissodactyla (horses)
Order Artiodactyla (cattle and other ungulates)
Order Proboscidea
Proboscidea

Proboscidea is an order containing only one family of living animals, Elephantidae, the elephants, with three living species .During the period of the last ice age there were more, now extinct species, including the genus of elephants Mammuthus and the elephant-like species the mastodons....
(elephants)
Order Edentata
Order Cetacea
Cetacea

The order Cetacea includes whales, dolphins, and porpoises. Cetus is Latin and is used in biological names to mean "whale"; its original meaning, "large sea animal", was more general....
(whales and dolphins)
Order Rodentia (mice, rats etc)
Order Lagomorpha
Lagomorpha

The lagomorphs are the members of the taxonomic order Lagomorpha, of which there are two family , the Leporidae , and the Ochotonidae . The name of the order is derived from the Greek lagos hare and morphe form....
(rabbits)
Order Primates (monkeys, apes and primates)