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Presumably in the common ancestral line to dinosaurs and crocodiles and birds
Answer for the clue "Presumably in the common ancestral line to dinosaurs and crocodiles and birds ", 9 letters:
thecodont
Word definitions for thecodont in dictionaries
WordNet
Word definitions in WordNet
n. presumably in the common ancestral line to dinosaurs and crocodiles and birds [syn: thecodont reptile ]
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Word definitions in The Collaborative International Dictionary
Thecodont \The"co*dont\, n. (Paleon.) One of the Thecodontia.
Usage examples of thecodont.
Bipedality developed in several thecodont lines, which permitted them to move about more quickly than the sprawling therapsids.
That difference goes way back, to some thecodont common ancestor in a period earlier than this one.
Dinosaurs developed from thecodont reptiles, and some therapsid reptiles became rather mammalian.
The replacement of therapsids by thecodonts is the first evidence of competitive exclusion in the Triassic.
Cynodonts could not compete with thecodonts for food and were soon replaced by them.
Both thecodonts and theropods contributed heavily to the decline and extinction of these groups.
The third wave of extinction can be seen at the end of the Triassic, when thecodonts were replaced by dinosaurs.
Due to scarcity of vegetation and decline of prey populations, the struggle for existence became severe, and the balance of competitive advantage between thecodonts and dinosaurs shifted.
Although some thecodonts approached erect posture, they walked flat-footed and were relatively slow in locomotion.
In contrast, the herbivorous thecodonts such as actosaurs foraged mainly on the ground.
With the emergence of the running prey population, thecodonts were unable to meet their food requirements.
Thecodonts are a diverse assemblage and their interrelationships are not fully known and agreed upon by experts, but, as a whole, they show the initiation of archosaurian tendencies.
Now, birds evolved from dinosaurs which evolved from thecodonts which evolved from primitive diapsids which evolved from captorhinomorphs, the first true reptiles.
This was my first word of the discovery, and it told of the identification of early shells, bones of ganoids and placoderms, remnants of labyrinthodonts and thecodonts, great mosasaur skull fragments, dinosaur vertebrae and armor plates, pterodactyl teeth and wing bones, Archaeopteryx debris, Miocene sharks’ teeth, primitive bird skulls, and other bones of archaic mammals such as palaeotheres, Xiphodons, Eohippi, Oreodons, and titanotheres.
This was my first word of the discovery, and it told of the identification of early shells, bones of ganoids and placoderms, remnants of labyrinthodonts and thecodonts, great mosasaur skull fragments, dinosaur vertebrae and armor plates, pterodactyl teeth and wing bones, Archaeopteryx debris, Miocene sharks' teeth, primitive bird skulls, and other bones of archaic mammals such as palaeotheres, Xiphodons, Eohippi, Oreodons, and titanotheres.