Evolution What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters

Parietal foramen Dentary Large clavicles, interclavicles, and coracoids Long phalanges Increased number of sacral vertebrae Limb ...

296 Evolution? The Fossils Say YES! sprawling limb posture seen in primitive synapsids but instead held their limbs vertically a ...

Mammalian Explosion 297 The front part is composed of the dentary bone (which contains the teeth) but behind it were many other ...

298 Evolution? The Fossils Say YES! primitive amniote coronoid bone. Likewise, the primitive articular jaw joint with the quad- ...

Mammalian Explosion 299 the jaw joint into the middle ear. For example, snakes cannot hear when they rear up to face the snake c ...

(A) (B) (C) (D) (a) (b) (c) (d) FIGURE 13.8. The primitive triconodont mammal Yanoconodon allini from the Lower Cretaceous of Ch ...

Mammalian Explosion 301 sediments. The most amazing thing about the specimen is that the middle ear bones are still connected to ...

302 Evolution? The Fossils Say YES! mammals evolved from cynodonts in the Late Triassic at exactly the same time as the early di ...

FIGURE 13.9. The skulls of some of the better known Mesozoic mammals. (A) Early Jurassic Sinoconodon. (B) Early Jurassic Morganu ...

(B) FIGURE 13.11. The beautifully preserved fossil (complete with hair) of one of the oldest known placental mammals, Eomaia sca ...

Mammalian Explosion 305 (B) known from most of the Cretaceous. The Liaoning beds also yield one of the oldest known placental ma ...

306 Evolution? The Fossils Say YES! just a few years ago. By the Late Cretaceous, both marsupials and placentals were evolving v ...

Mammalian Explosion 307 to construct ancestor-descendant sequences. Because the hard enamel on teeth is often the most durable p ...

308 Evolution? The Fossils Say YES! had little or no fossil record but had all this anatomical data in the soft tissues and skel ...

Mesozoic Multituberculata Monotremata Marsupialia Primitive insectivorous placentals Edentata Glires Pholidota Lagomorpha Rodent ...

310 Evolution? The Fossils Say YES! the Archonta (primates, colugos, and tree shrews, but not bats) as their sister group, formi ...

Mammalian Explosion 311 In other cases, creationist accusations are simply misleading and unreasonable. Gish (1995) and Davis an ...

312 Evolution? The Fossils Say YES! true for an untrained, unobservant amateur, but anyone who knows bat anatomy can tell how pr ...

Mammalian Explosion 313 FIGURE 13.14. The most primitive true carnivorans are known as miacids, which were shaped roughly like w ...

Hyaenodonts Oxyaenids Viverravids Miacids Palm civets Creodonts Caniforms Cats Civets Raccoons Weasels Skunks Lesser panda True ...