Teinolophos
| Teinolophos | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Lower Cretaceous | ||||||||||||
| 115 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Teinolophos | ||||||||||||
| Rich , Vickers-Rich , Constantine , Flannery , Kool & Klaveren , 1999 | ||||||||||||
Teinolophos trusleri is an extinct species of mammal . She lived in the Cretaceous period in Australia and one of the earliest known ancestor of the platypus .
From teinolophos only parts of the heretofore lower jaw with individual molars found. Similarities to Steropodon , a closely related, somewhat younger genus, can be seen in the structure of the teeth . However, Teinolophos was significantly smaller than the Steropodon or today's platypus and only reached a body length of around 10 centimeters.
A deep notch in the back of the jaw has rekindled the discussion about the ancestry of the mammals . According to Rich and others (2005), the notch shows that the development of the ossicles and the secondary temporomandibular joint in Teinolophus was not yet complete. However, this development is an important criterion for the definition of mammals . Rich and others conclude from this that this transformation took place twice in the course of the mammalian revolution and that the mammals are thus much more distantly related to the other mammals than previously assumed. However, these theories are not recognized by other scientists.
literature
- TS Kemp: The Origin & Evolution of Mammals. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2005, ISBN 0-19-850761-5 .
- TH Rich , JA Hopson, AM Musser, TF Flannery , P. Vickers-Rich : Independent Origins of Middle Ear Bones in Monotremes and Therians. In: Science . 307 = 5711, 2005, pp. 910-914.
Web links
- Images of the jaw ( Memento from March 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
