Half Mammal, Half Reptile Discovered In Utah

a reply to: SlapMonkey

yea well according to the article we all carry some traits from other species and we are just identified as the type of majority traits we hold so not really a cross over so to speak but just closer to the cross over.

they said it better

if this were an interrogation then we would call it a lie but since it is ats and peeps cry for civility we will give the benefit of the doubt.

originally posted by: SlapMonkey
a reply to: howtonhawky

So, not a hybrid half-and-half, but a "missing link," so to speak--a transitional animal that wasn't quite full-on mammal yet, but still retained non-mammalian traits consistent with reptiles.

Not really transitional between mammals and reptiles.
Mammal-like reptiles (synapsids) far predate this creature (and even the dinosaurs) and it descends from them (so do we and all other mammals.)

So, a much later version of what could possibly be such a transitional family (not just one species.)
This article says it all, and also answers how they know what it is and that it laid eggs.
Link

Harte

It just seems strange to me that these paleontologists can look at a single skull, some teeth, and a few smashed-flat bones to come up with this detailed description of a critter that lived over a 100 million years ago.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt because this is their life's work and they invest so much thought into this.

But if they were CSI investigators, and this is all the evidence they had, the case would be thrown out of court before the judge even sat down.

-dex

a reply to: DexterRiley

a reply to: DexterRiley

The skull is the best and latest of fossils for a group of animals already known to scientists with the first finds from the 1840's.

en.wikipedia.org...

By studying its anatomy and performing an evolutionary tree analysis, we found that Cifelliodon belonged to a long-lived and widespread group of early mammal relatives called haramiyidans.

news.usc.edu...

a reply to: SeaWorthy

It all has to do with our penchant for categorization.

We just love putting things into boxes, and those boxes into bigger boxes.

Scientists have even turned this activity into an entire field of biological research, called taxonomy.

The current, most widely accepted method "Cladistics" is considered to be the most objective as it takes into account an organism’s evolutionary history.

en.wikipedia.org...

originally posted by: DexterRiley

It just seems strange to me that these paleontologists can look at a single skull, some teeth, and a few smashed-flat bones to come up with this detailed description of a critter that lived over a 100 million years ago.

I'll give them the benefit of the doubt because this is their life's work and they invest so much thought into this.

But if they were CSI investigators, and this is all the evidence they had, the case would be thrown out of court before the judge even sat down.

-dex

If you find a human skull, you can state that "this animal had live births." Does that confuse you?
Specimens of animals similar to this one, just not from Utah, are well attested.

Harte

a reply to: Harte

If you find a human skull, you can state that "this animal had live births." Does that confuse you?

Actually, kinda, yeah.

One of the defining characteristics of mammals are our teeth. Different clades of mammals have very different teeth from one another. Eutherian mammals (of which placentals are the sole known survivors) have one kind of teeth. Metatherians (of which marsupials are the current sole known survivors) have very different teeth. Monotremes, well, don't have any.

If you looked at a human skull, you could tell we were more closely related to other placentals, from the teeth especially.

That would mean we - probably - gave live birth. if you had living placentals to compare us to, that is.

Most mammal fossils are just their teeth during the Mesozoic and the critters get sorted based on that. It's sparse, but...

Now, do we know if Cifelliodon wahkarmoosuch was a live bearer or a egg layer? Nope. No idea. Not really. We have some guesses based on the genes for creating egg yolk and producing milk, but...they are fuzzy at best for this since we don't know when C. wahkarmoosuch's haramiyidan ancestors diverged from the mammaliaform line that led to therians (metatherians + eutherians + ancestors).

Whoever came up with the idea this was a half mammal-half reptile should be scolded if not worse. If we saw this alive today, we'd call it a mammal. The platypus is more divergent than this from our common mammals today. If you want something that looked far, far more like a reptilomammalian hybrid, go back to the dicynodonts, gorgonopsids and whatnot. Cynodonts and therocephalians were pretty mammal-like. And mammals are just very derived descendants of cynodonts. Well, technically, they ARE cynodonts, but let's not get into that for now.

a reply to: Harte

If you find a human skull, you can state that "this animal had live births." Does that confuse you?

Well, because I know what a human skull looks like, and I know that humans are mammals, I would conclude that the skull was representative of a species that had live births.

However, if I had never seen a human skull, or knew what a human was, I personally wouldn't have a clue.

Specimens of animals similar to this one, just not from Utah, are well attested.

I read that there were similar specimens in a couple of the linked articles. I assume that there was more evidence than just a couple of teeth in support of those other proposed animals.

Basically, as one of the unwashed masses, it is difficult for me to comprehend how so much information can be gleaned from such a small amount of evidence about a creature that lived 120 million years ago.

But this is little more than just a curiosity for me, so I'll take the experts' word on it.

-dex

a reply to: anzha

Whoever came up with the idea this was a half mammal-half reptile should be scolded if not worse.

LOL
Yep. Scientific click-bait.


I halfway expected to see a picture of some kind-of chimera made up of a lizard head and chipmunk body.


-dex

a reply to: DexterRiley

I halfway expected to see a picture of some kind-of chimera made up of a lizard head and chipmunk body.

You want something like Suminia and its relatives then.

Or just as weird...but not related to mammals are the drepanosaurs (bird/chameleon cross looking thing...that might have been partially aquatic...)

I think the Duck Billed Platypus is a modern day equivalent.
mentalfloss.com...
oceanservice.noaa.gov...

I dont think dinosaurs were reptiles or mammals. This was a misidentification from trying to fit them in to modern ecosystems. Most likely dinosaurs were warm blooded much like birds today and less like crocodiles. I think modern reptiles and mammals just took particular features of dinosaurs. And not as separate as we believe them to be.

no, its a dumb assumption that this artistic symbolisation of an obviously female deity represents a real-life being .

it is art.

cheers.

originally posted by: anzha
a reply to: Harte

If you find a human skull, you can state that "this animal had live births." Does that confuse you?

Actually, kinda, yeah.

One of the defining characteristics of mammals are our teeth. Different clades of mammals have very different teeth from one another. Eutherian mammals (of which placentals are the sole known survivors) have one kind of teeth. Metatherians (of which marsupials are the current sole known survivors) have very different teeth. Monotremes, well, don't have any.

The implication in the post I responded to was that only a single skull of this kind of animal was available for study:

It just seems strange to me that these paleontologists can look at a single skull, some teeth, and a few smashed-flat bones to come up with this detailed description of a critter that lived over a 100 million years ago.

That's simply not the case.
I'm not going into how they know they were egg layers because I don't know, just saying it's an accepted view.
I assume it's from finding eggs somewhere - or many wheres - along the evolutionary line of this family, but like I said, I don't know. Anyone interested could probably find out though.

Harte

originally posted by: dragonridr
I dont think dinosaurs were reptiles or mammals. This was a misidentification from trying to fit them in to modern ecosystems. Most likely dinosaurs were warm blooded much like birds today and less like crocodiles. I think modern reptiles and mammals just took particular features of dinosaurs. And not as separate as we believe them to be.

There was a push to create a new classification "Dinosauria" (I think it was called) some time back.
Don't know if it got anywhere.

Harte

originally posted by: vonclod
I think the Duck Billed Platypus is a modern day equivalent.
mentalfloss.com...
oceanservice.noaa.gov...

Exactly!!!

originally posted by: anti72
no, its a dumb assumption that this artistic symbolisation of an obviously female deity represents a real-life being .

it is art.

cheers.

Hah! it is also a dumb assumption that others have assumed any such!

Putting forth a possibility is not the same clearly.

originally posted by: Harte

originally posted by: dragonridr
I dont think dinosaurs were reptiles or mammals. This was a misidentification from trying to fit them in to modern ecosystems. Most likely dinosaurs were warm blooded much like birds today and less like crocodiles. I think modern reptiles and mammals just took particular features of dinosaurs. And not as separate as we believe them to be.

There was a push to create a new classification "Dinosauria" (I think it was called) some time back.
Don't know if it got anywhere.

Harte

Certainly many examples from around the whole world.
www.ancientpages.com...

They have been called the "Nagas" ("snakes") in India, the Quetzalcoatls ("Plumed Serpents") in Mexico, the Djedhi ("snakes") in Egypt, the Adders ("snakes") in Britain and the Lung ("dragons") in China. The Toltec Mayan god Gugumatz was described as a "serpent of wisdom" - a feathered snake god, one of all three groups of gods who created Earth and humankind and gave them knowledge. Ancient references to “serpent gods,” “flying serpents,” and “dragons” are quite common.

Collectively they have been called - the "Serpents of Wisdom". These enigmatic figurines, dated to the so-called Ubaid period in Ur (6000 to 4000 BC) were unearthed by Sir Charles Leonard Woolley (17 April 1880 - 20 February 1960), a British archaeologist best known for his excavations in the 1920s and 1930s in Mesopotamia. The figurines depict snake- or reptilian-headed humanoids that were found in several Ubaid cemeteries in the vicinity of Ur, southern Iraq.

originally posted by: howtonhawky
took 5 seconds...
www.livescience.com...

A small, furry animal with a blunt snout and beady eyes scuttled across what is now eastern Utah some 130 million years ago. And while the wee beast was surely unusual and fascinating, there's one thing it was definitely not: half-mammal and half-reptile.

Interesting article and their way of making the distinction.

both mammal ancestors and reptile ancestors branched off from a shared common ancestor hundreds of millions of years ago, Panciroli explained.