- ______________ is the number of different types of non-avian dinosaur genera over time.
- The total number of known dinosaur genera is estimated today at about
- Marine-adapted lizards called ______________ went extinct geologically abruptly, at the end of the Cretaceous.
- The whale- and dolphin-like marine diapsids called ______________ are known to have disappeared well before the K-Pg boundary.
- The earliest mammals - tiny, shrew-sized, insectivorous creatures - appeared on Earth
- ________________ are people who study extinct plants.
- When faunas develop in relative isolation and become distinct, this type of distinctness is called
- At the K-Pg boundary there was observed a rapid and complete breakdown in ___________________ between surface and deep waters, to less than 10 per cent of what it had been
- ______________ is the chemical reactions and pathways an organism uses to obtain energy and put it to work.
- _________________ are lineages that must have existed that have so far not left a physical record (through fossils) of their existence.
- The pattern of waxing and waning in dominance, as one group supersedes another in evolutionary time, is called
- At the end of the Triassic, dinosaurs became the dominant ______________________, meaning they became the most abundant, diverse, and visible group of tetrapods.
- A ________________ is an amphibian from the Cretaceous Antarctic assemblage that apparently went extinct in the Early Jurassic everywhere else in the world.
- Gymnosperms and angiosperms are united by the diagnostic character of possessing _________, which are nutrient-bearing pods developed for the dissemination of gametes.
- Most land plants are ____________, in that they possess specialized tissues that conduct water and nutrients throughout the plant.
- The ________________ is the inescapable fact that, as we get closer and closer to the Recent, fossil biotas become better and better known.
- Endothermic tetrapods are capable of higher levels of activity over longer periods of time; it takes longer for the muscles of endotherms to enter the anaerobic physiological state characterized by ______________ production.
- Bones grow by remodeling, which involves the resorption (or dissolution) of bone first laid down, and redeposition of a kind of bone called
- Organisms change proportions as they increase in size; this is called
- Secondary bone is deposited in the form of a series of vascular canals called