ANIMAL HISTORY

This lineage provides an excellent series of transitional fossils. The development of a key mammalian trait, the presence of only a single bone in the lower jaw (compared to several in reptiles) can be traced in the fossil history of this group. It includes the excellent transitional fossils, Diarthrognathus and Morganucodon, whose lower jaws have both reptilian and mammalian articulations with the upper. Other novel features found in this lineage include the development of different kinds of teeth (a feature known as heterodonty), the beginnings of a secondary palate, and enlargement of the dentary bone in the lower jaw. Legs are held directly underneath the body, an evolutionary advance that occurred independently in the ancestors of the dinosaurs.
The end of the Permian was marked by perhaps the greatest mass extinction ever to occur. Some estimates suggest that up to 90% of the species then living became extinct. (Recent research has suggested that this event, like the better-known end-Cretaceous event, was caused by the impact of an asteroid.) During the subsequent Triassic period (248 - 213 million years ago), the survivors of that event radiated into the large number of now-vacant ecological niches.
However, at the end of the Permian it was the dinosaurs, not the mammal-like reptiles, which took advantage of the newly available terrestrial niches to diversify into the dominant land vertebrates. In the sea, the ray-finned fish began the major adaptive radiation that would see them become the most species-rich of all vertebrate classes.
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