1-Eozostrodon
Scientists find hair millions of years old
LA Times-Washington Post News Service
In the beginning, there were no bad hair days. Now, from an unusual source, comes evidence that the very first hair day occurred millions of years earlier than had been thought.
A team of scientists from the University of Massachusetts and the University of California at Santa Barbara spent three years examining fossilized animal feces containing the digested remains of animals eaten as prey. What they found indicates that hair, a hallmark of mammals, evolved more than 210 million years ago.
Deposits of ancient mammalian feces and bird pellets are unusual, and soft tissue such as hair is rarely preserved. But red clay apparently protected a 60 million-year-old trove of excrement from mammalian carnivores, along with pellets coughed up by birds of prey, in a dry lake bed in Bayan Ulan, China.
In fact, in the Feb. 20 issue of the journal Nature, the researchers report the animal scat was preserved so well that it saved even the microscopic scaly pattern on individual hairs. The researchers found four fossil mammal species with hair. One of them was a long-extinct rodent-like animal – a multituberculate – only distantly related to living mammals and previously not known to have fur.
Since these creatures are known to have lived as long ago as 210 million years, the researchers conclude that hair had existed at least that far in the past – 5 million or 6 million years earlier than the previous evidence of hair.
2- Therapisids
Therapsids are a clade (species from the same ancestors) of advanced animals from the late Permian period. They had teeth that were distinctive because they had post-canines and incisors. Here are some examples:
3- Proganochelys
Proganochelys is the oldest known turtle, dating from the late Triassic period, evolving about 210 million years ago, only a little before the dinosaurs and mammals evolved. This anapsidwas about 2 feet (60 cm) long, had a shell (formed by fused ribs and other bones), was an omnivore, had no teeth, and had a large ear-opening. It had protective spikes on its neck, which could not retract. It probably couldn’t pull its other appendages into its shell for protection either (like later turtles could). It had a relatively long tail equipped with bony spikes and a tail club. It lived near ponds and other small bodies of water, but was probably primarily terrestrial. Fossils have been found in Germany and Thailand.
4-Pterosaurs
Pterosaurs were an order of flying reptiles that lived during the time of the dinosaurs. The pterosaurs ranged in size from a few inches to over 40 feet. They had hollow bones, were lightly built, and had small bodies. They had large brains and good eyesight. Some pterosaurs had fur on their bodies, and some (like Pteranodon) had light-weight, bony crests on their heads that may have acted as a rudder when flying, or may have been a sexual characteristic.
Pterosaur wings were covered by a leathery membrane. This thin but tough membrane stretched between its body, the top of its legs and its elongated fourth fingers, forming the structure of the wing. Claws protruded from the other fingers.
Pterosaurs could flap their wings and fly with power, but the largest ones (like Quetzalcoatlus,which had a wingspan up to 36 feet or 11 m wide) probably relied on updrafts (rising warm air) and breezes to help in flying.
5- Desmatosuchus
Desmatosuchus was an ancient armored aetosaur that had sharp spines running along its body. (They were reptiles, but not dinosaurs). They resembled today’s crocodile, but with spikes, but had a much shorter beak-like snout. It was about 16 ft. long. This armadillo-like animal had a bulky body, four short legs, and a long tail. The longest spikes were on its shoulders.
6-Ichthyosuars
Were reptiles that were strong swimmers fully adapted to life in the seas. they were better adapted than any other reptiles, although they still needed to go to the surface periodically to breathe air. Ichthyosaurs were stream-lined marine reptiles that ranged in size from 7-30 feet long. They had sharp teeth in long jaws, and big eyes. They had four crescent shaped fins, a stabilizing dorsal fin, and fish-like tail with tow lobes. they breathed air with lungs through nostrils which were close to the eyes near the top of the snout. They gave birth to live young; fossils have been found with baby Ichthyosaurs in the abdomen.
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