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‘greek’ –> ‘fused arch’
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*synonymous with theropsids*
(greek – ‘beast-face’)
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*”synapsids” are a group of animals that includes ‘mammals’ and every animal more closely related to ‘mammals’ than to other living ‘amniotes’*
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(they are easily separated from other ‘amniotes’ by having a ‘temporal fenestra’, an opening low in the skull roof behind each eye, leaving a bony arch beneath each; this accounts for their name)
(primitive ‘synapsids’ are usually called ‘pelycosaurs’ or ‘pelycosaur-grade synapsids’; more advanced mammal-like ones, ‘therapsids’)
(the non-mammalian members are described as mammal-like reptiles in classical systematics; they can also be called stem mammals or “proto-mammals”)
(‘synapsids’ evolved from ‘basal amniotes’ and are 1 of the 2 major groups of the later ‘amniotes’; the other is the ‘sauropsids’, a group that includes modern ‘reptiles’ and ‘birds’)
(the distinctive ‘temporal fenestra’ developed in the ‘ancestral synapsid’ about 312 million years ago, during the ‘Late Carboniferous period’)
(‘synapsids’ were the largest ‘terrestrial vertebrates’ in the ‘Permian’ period, 299 to 251 million years ago, although some of the larger ‘pareiasaurs’ at the end of ‘Permian’ could match them in size)
(as with other groups then extant, their numbers and variety were severely reduced by the ‘Permian–Triassic’ extinction)
(by the time of the extinction at the end of ‘Permian’, all the older forms of ‘synapsids’ (known as ‘pelycosaurs’) were already gone, having been replaced by the more advanced ‘therapsids’)
(though the ‘dicynodonts’ and ‘Eutheriodontia’, the latter consisting of ‘Eutherocephalia’ (‘Therocephalia’) and ‘Epicynodontia’ (‘Cynodontia’), continued into the ‘Triassic’ period as the only known surviving ‘therapsids’, ‘archosaurs’ became the largest and most numerous ‘land vertebrates’ in the course of this period)
(the cynodont group ‘probainognathia’, which includes ‘mammaliaformes’, were the only ‘synapsids’ who outlasted the ‘triassic’)
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*after the “cretaceous–paleogene extinction event”, the synapsids (in the form of ‘mammals’) again became the largest ‘land animals’*
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*🌈✨ *TABLE OF CONTENTS* ✨🌷*
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🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥*we won the war* 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥