Chapter 30 - Mammals

Notes for Chapter 30: Mammals

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or back to Chapter 28

Chapter 30 Assignment: 609-621, 624-626, 634-639;
RQ-30: 1-2, 6-8, 11, 15-16 (last two lectures)

Introduction: The Tell-Tale Hair

Source of Image

Featured Animal: Grizzly Bear
More Links: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7

I. Introduction to Mammals

II. Origin and Evolution of Mammals

III. Structural and Functional Adaptations of Mammals

A. Integument and its Derivatives (including hair)
Click here for a good overview of human sensory features

B. Food and Feeding

C. Migration (skip)

D. Flight and Echolocation (skip)

E. Reproduction

IV. Humans and the Domestication of Mammals (skip)

V. Human Evolution (I will try to cover in part; if so the reading may help as supplementary reference, but there are much better treatments of primate and,
more specifically, human evolution.)

The following supplementary outline of lecture notes does not follow Ch. 30 headings above.

Expect that I will also cover all of the above, except as indicated.

Mammals
1. Mammalian synapomorphies (includes three ossicles in middle ear)
2. Major clades of mammals (see here for a current phylogenetic overview.
   Note: some new concepts are emerging, such as a clade of African mammals
   dubbed Afrotheria, and the notion that whales and hippos are sister taxa,
   the so-called "whippo" hypothesis)
3. Advantages/disadvantages of placenta
4. Diversity of placental mammals (Eutheria)
5. Limb diversity (see also pp. 652, 660, or here)
6. Tooth diversity (see also pp. 618, 710, or here)
7. Mammalian diversity
8. Mammalian biogeography through Cenozoic Era
9. Important Amniote extinction events

Amniote Extinction Events (I am providing the following links because I am not sure how much time I will have to cover these topics in lecture.)

  –Paleozoic amniotes (synapsids and reptiles)
  –Extinctions at end of Paleozoic Era (end of Permian Period)
           This was the "Mother" of all extinctions, when
           over 90 percent of all animal species went extinct,
           including amniote vertebrates.
      Permian/Triassic (P/Tr) Transition (about 245 Mya)

Synapsids had dominated the Permian and some groups (including our ancestors) recovered in the Early Triassic; dinosaurs became dominant by the Late Triassic Period of the Mesozoic Era, and especially flourished in the Jurassic and Cretaceous. The first mammals had also evolved by the Late Triassic, but they remained small and mostly nocturnal through the Jurassic and Cretaceous, until the next major extinction event that ended the Mesozoic Era. Now we are living in an Era when terrestrial vertebrates are dominated by mammals and birds (one specific lineage of therapod dinosaurs that managed to survive).

  –Extinctions at end of Mesozoic Era:
      Cretaceous/Tertiary (K/T) Periods (65 Mya)
      (Click here for some excellent lecture notes on the K/T extinction event)
  –Cenozoic Era mammals: Eocene Period (See some spectacular Eocene fossils)
  –Eocene/Oligocene extinctions (37 to 33 Mya)
  –Pleistocene and Recent mammals (2 to 0 Mya)

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