Morphology forms the most fundamental level of data in vertebrate palaeontology because it
is through interpretations of morphology that taxa are identified, creating the basis for broad …

Acoustic communication, broadly distributed along the vertebrate phylogeny, plays a
fundamental role in parental care, mate attraction and various other behaviours. Despite its …

The early evolution of archosauromorphs during the Permo-Triassic constitutes an excellent
empirical case study to shed light on evolutionary radiations in deep time and the timing and …

Over the last 25 years, researchers, mostly paleontologists, have developed a system of
rank-free, phylogenetically defined names for the primary clades of turtles. As these names …

Amniotes include mammals, reptiles and birds, representing 75% of extant vertebrate
species on land. They originated around 318 million years ago in the early Late …

Climate change–induced mass extinctions provide unique opportunities to explore the
impacts of global environmental disturbances on organismal evolution. However, their …

Metabolic heat production in archosaurs has played an important role in their evolutionary
radiation during the Mesozoic, and their ancestral metabolic condition has long been a …

Covering diverse species from garter snakes to Komodo dragons, this book delves into the
evolutionary origins and fascinating details of the mysterious social lives of reptiles. Reptiles …

Sauropterygia was a taxonomically and ecomorphologically diverse clade of Mesozoic
marine reptiles spanning the Early Triassic to the Late Cretaceous. Sauropterygians are …

The defining masterwork on the evolution of reptiles. Over 300 million years ago, an early
land vertebrate developed an egg that contained the embryo in an amnion, allowing it to be …