inquiry about evolution?

Question

I'm not sure if this is the correct place to ask this, but....

1) I know about the lizards to mammals thing. but did the first mammals have any fur?

2) what was the habitat of the dod bird like?

3) how many crocodile ancestors were there? as in actually from the same category like "crocodylidae"?

thanks!

Answer 1

1. Did the first mammals have hair? Well.... maybe. You see there is a catch. Mammals are endothermic (produce their own body heat) Reptiles are ectothermic (get their heat from the environment). Now if you are endothermic then you need an insulating coat but if you are exothermic an insulating coat keeps you from regulating your temperature via the environment. This is a catch 22. Which evolved first the coat or the endothermy? This puzzle has not been solved yet. It is believed that endothermy first evolved in an environment warm enough that the lack of fur would not have been a serious problem. But was this a mammal? It was at least a precursor.

2. The dodo lived on the Mauritius Island not on the malay archepelago. Sorry. It was tropical forest.

3. They are still discovering crocodile ancestors that are actually crocs. Including ones that walked on land (I mean walked and fed on land not in water!)

Answer 2

The first mammals did have fur, or at least hair follicles - or they're not strictly mammals. Remember fur is just like scales - made of the same stuff, and comes from follicles. Not a huge adaptation from scales.

The dodo (or, dod, if you don't like os very much) lived in Mauritius not that long ago. It was probably the same as it is now (I believe it's quite a hot country with forests - but too lazy to find out right now). But there were no humans...until we came along and spoiled the party with our rats and our cats.

The crocodile probably has not that many ancestors, relatively. They have remained pretty much unchanged since the dinosaurs. They are reptiles, in the family crocodylidae and order crocodilia. They are, however, in the same class, phylum and kingdom as other reptiles. There would have been an earlier form of crocodile, and then an earlier still one. But I don't know what these are.Check out the link below for a similar creature to a crocodile, in the prehistoric times.

Answer 3

Mammals have had fur, it is a defining feature of mammals to be warm blooded, and fur allows mammals to remain insulated and control body temperature. So i imaging that they did have.

The Dodo is a modern extinct bird, so its habitat would be whatever Mauritius was like two hundred years ago. Below is a link.

Don't know about the crocodiles. Try wikipedia crocodile evolution.

Answer 4

1. A shared feature of all mammals is hair, so yes, the first mammals had fur or hair of some kind.

2. Dodo birds occured in lowland forests in the Malay archipelago (and in captivity). They fed fruits of at least one tree: the "dodo tree". They were flightless, and were hunted in both open areas and denser forests.

3. Archosaurs were ancestors to the first crocs in the late Permian about 250 million years ago. They gave rise to two lineages: dinos and birds, crocs. The most recent ancesor to modern crocodylids probably evolved in the early Miocene, a little more than 20 million years ago.

Answer 5

well, not necessarily, because the mammal line for the first mammal can be very hard to draw. Because evolution is a slow process. an organism can't just 'change' when it gives birth to a significant level. its very very slow and not much change. but these organisms had time SO:

pre mammals, were around 300 million years ago. they were called synapsids... the first mammals.

then came rise to Therapsids, inwhich some had hair

so to answer your question... no. they did not have hair.

also recall that some mammals lost their hair and became swimmers. (whales... dolphins)

more evidence i just HAVE to say... whales have pelvic bones which shows that they once had legs which means they did INFACT walk. verstigal structure. I could go on and on but to answer the hair question no.

the dodo bird question, well it was during the ice age and they all died. cold. stupid birds.

the crocs? well... just some dinosaurs... go to the library or something or an index on taxonomic evolution. you can just find out where it came from in a book somewhere.

Answer 6

How did you find out about the lizards to mammals thing?

Answer 7

I am not answering this q i am doing this because i have no other way of contacting you. you answered my q "why do christions... ect" and you said what r u 8 well no i am not and i find it offencive that you would do that i was only asking a mature q and you didnt need to be rude....

Answer 8

"so a real Christian would believe that Jesus was a liar in saying there's One Way? nice logic

personally, I don't think Hitler is in Heaven, do you?"

So jesus is the onlyway, now just because she doesn't believe all non-believers go to hell, doesn't mean she doesn;t think jesus is the only way, of course we will come by jesus in the future, how do you think it happens for those who have never heard of Jesus, will they be punished because they were brought up not knowing him? No.