Basal Synapsids: Your Earliest Ancestors
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- Опубликовано: 20 сен 2024
- Originating in the second half of the Carboniferous period, Synapsids were one of the major lineage of Amniotes, being the ancient ancestors of Mammals. Starting out as small and somewhat marginal lizard-like animals, Synapsids possessed a number of defining anatomical traits that separated them from their Sauropsid cousins. These included a single opening behind each eye and the presence of canine teeth in the upper jaw. When the Carboniferous rainforest collapse led to an increasingly arid world, the Synapsids diversified explosively, expanding greatly in size and ecological diversity. Some forms, such as the Caseasaurians, developed large bodies and herbivorous diets, while Ophiacodontids became the first Amniote apex carnivores. Both lineages thrived and persisted into the Middle Permian, when they were replaced by more derived and superficially mammal-like forms.
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I love the Permian age. There was clearly a complex ecology with probably as many species in different niches as has existed at any time since. A complete system of fauna and flora, long before the more well known age of dinosaurs.
Same with me!
Yeah. It had so many diverse clades of different extinct creatures, most of them which wouldn’t have fossilised. Why did the extinction need to happen, WHY?
@@juanjoyaborja.3054 Because Siberia was tired of being trapped. It wanted to stretch its legs.
Unless there's preservation bias at work, the Permian has seemingly less diversity than any period after it.
Icecaps, huge area of continental wasteland, and the interconnected lands limit the available area for endemic lifeforms.
The mass extinctions (not just one, but three) punishes specialists even further.
@@pengen_gantinama The Permian was truly a period of extinctions, even before the Siberian Traps erupted it was pushing life to the brink, probably why the end was so massive after millions of years of gradual planetwide decline with little time to recover before mass volcanism.
The paleoart at 10:40 is exactly why I love this period... it still blows my mind that the first mega-beasts on land were closer to mammals than to reptiles, and that the 'Age of Reptiles' was actually an interval between two Ages of Synapsids.
I'm still shocked that we know as much as we do about our most ancient ancestors! W/ how amazingly rare it is for their remains to fossilize & then found, it's just awe inspiring that we're able to rebuild so much of their world!
I agree. When you watch videos like this, you see how many fossils of different species have been found, right back to the Carboniferous, even if they're often only partial skeletons.
It really is amazing, given how distant the Carboniferous was from today.
@@latheofheaven1017 just props on your handle.
The point is this is just a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of the myriad of species that existed since the start of life on earth.
Amen, there are some very brilliant people in the world .
An excellent video.
Informative and visually appealing.
I once called a girl at school a mammal.
She was so upset that she told the teacher who struggled not to laugh.
I should have called her a basal synapsid....
Was she religious? It only seems like religious people get upset over the fact that we are animals.
Calling some human a mammal is like calling the komodo dragon a reptile.
You only have 25 thousand subs! You need 10 million subs
Ah thank you!
Looking at the non mammal synapsid skull and how it compares with modern mammal made me realize how cool and complex mammal skulls are.
I would love to see a video on ammonites, since you mostly make videos about vertibrates.
That’s a good idea, I’ll consider that in future.
I'm enjoying this. It reads almost like a history of terrestrial life. Strange how the further back we go in time, modern terms like reptiles have their boundaries blurred almost to the point of uselessness. It really shows just how much things have changed over time. I'm a bit disappointed this didn't include the gorgonopsids, but I suppose that will come in time.
Watch Aron Ra's 50 part series 'Systematic Classification of Life'
It's modern people half ass colloquial definitions that blur the names, not taxonomy. "Reptiles" are a descendant clade of Saurapsida called Reptilia
My favorite group of prehistoric animals! I dont know why but its always fascinated me that the earliest terrestrial mammal relatives looked like reptiles and how later synapsids looked like early cenozoic mammals for example estemmenosuchus and unitatherium have very similar head crest structures and I assume possibly a similar diet.
Cheerio, Doc. I'm really interested in the gorgonopsids and dimetrodontids you kept teasing there. Hope to see a vid wot ties them to this.
Hey so, the latter family is called "Sphenacodontidae" or probably called "Sphenacodontids" in the way you're saying it. Dimetrodon is apart of the family Sphenacodontidae.
Also, fun fact, "Gorgonopsid" isn't a real animal, it's Inostrancevia most commonly and is apart of the family Gorgonopsidae. Gorgonops was a real animal though, it was a fair bit smaller.
@@Poliostasis while I know that what I wrote was easily understood, I truly do appreciate your providing the correct terminology. I come here to learn, and you have assisted me there. Thank you.
@@jonathanthomas8736 No worries! Glad to help in that way :)
Thanks for covering this topic. I always find it a bit mysterious, with many questions that I can't find an answer for.
- What's the difference between sauropsid and diapsid? Are the two terms synonyms?
- How do anapsids fit into this story?
- Which group did the common ancestor of synapsids and diapsids belong to? Did synapsids split away from diapsids, or vice versa, or did they both emerge at the same time from an ancestor that was neither of these things?
Those are all great questions and I hope to answer them fully in the next video. However, in brief, Sauropsida is the sister group to Synapsida, with both lineages appearing at roughly the same time. Sauropsids originally had no openings in the skull, with Parareptiles being a good example of this. Diapsids were more derived Sauropsids that developed two opening in the back of the skull. Diapsids first appear in the Late Carboniferous with forms like Petrolacosaurus, as did the more basal Parareptiles.
@@dr.polaris6423 Amazing! Thank you!
@@dr.polaris6423 I've heard that some parareptiles did have skull openings too?
I'd suggest Aron Ra's 50 part series 'Systematic Classification of Life'
The Mesosaurs did, but their classification is still a bit unclear. They have sometimes been placed as the most basal Sauropsids, which would make their possession of temporal fenestrae possibly ancestral for the clade.
@Dr. Polaris , you enchant us, with your calmly effusive, detailed descriptions of these, our ancient kinfolk. While your British syllabic emphasis on dzhe-NEH-rah (a.o.t. DZEN-er-ah) is slightly distracting, otherwise, your accent is soothing, your tonal mode is soothing, and your content is mind-blowingly comprehensive, instructive, entertaining, etc.. I'm on the Asperger's/Autism spectrum, with Paleontology being one of my "deep dive" interests. That you keep people like me engaged...
This isn't just a compliment. I want you to understand, your work is genuinely amazing. I come from a line of teachers. I've degrees in Psychology and Religious Studies, minors in Anthropology and Biology. I'm a life-long autodidactile, 144 IQ. I'm subbed to dozens of YT channels, for dozens of reasons, and share videos to FB for socially relevant content, while maintaining an open list of videos on my YT, including many of yours. You amaze me. Do you know how hard that is, these days?
Thank you for making a video on the Synapsids, they deserve more love and attention
Yay synapsids!
Always loved your synapsid videos. Keep them coming!
Awesome video on often overlooked theme. Also really appreciate your use of metric system - not everyone in the english speaking part of paleo youtube provide both metric and imperial measurements.
Did you change up the way you write the scripts or something? I love all your videos, but there was something about this one that made it a lot easier to follow and digest. It felt like there was more contextual information about the world and time surrounding these animals, but maybe it just stood out to me more this time for some reason. Either way - great job!
It's about an an entire clade, the early Synapsida, his other videos look to be about species, generas or tribes.
@@whatabouttheearth Oh, good point! Thanks for the observation!
First rate!!! Thank you so much for this excellent content about our early Synapsid relatives! I have been interested in these Paleozoic animals since I first read Stephen Jay Gould's "Wonderful Life" which, as you know, describes the amazing creatures of the Burgess Shale in British Columbia. Right about that time I first encountered the term "mammal like reptiles" and "photo mammals" and I have been on the hunt for information like this ever since. I will be viewing this video several more times and I am very eager for your next installment. Many thanks, sir!
I meant to say "proto mammals" but spellcheck changed it!
I first encountered the synapsids in Danish comic book author Claus Deleuran's comic book history of Denmark, where the 1st volume among other things covered the prehistoric animals that lived in the geographical area before humans. He goes through several different types of synapsids, this was written in the late 1980's/early 1990's when they were still called "mammal-lizards". Today the synapsids seem to be considered universally much closer to mammals than reptiles.
My earliest ancestors?
I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can't help it. I was born sneering. But I struggle hard to overcome this defect. I mortify my pride continually.
What
@@brunobucciaratiswife How de do, little girls, how de do? (aside) Oh, my protoplasmal ancestor!
@@brunobucciaratiswife It is very painful to me to have to say "How de do, little girls, how de do?" to young persons. I'm not in the habit of saying "How de do, little girls, how de do?" to anybody under the rank of a Stockbroker.
this reads like dialogue in an Alejandro Jodorowsky comic book
@@Tsotha Actually, it reads like the libretto to the Gilbert & Sullivan musical "The Mikado".
0:51 I guess that's why the people behind Walking with Monsters and Prehistoric Park thought that was an ideal filming location.
1:05 And you just posted a WWM poster.
7:43 "Who ya callin pinhead?"
That's nice! :)
Can you look up the Beast of Bray Road please? It is a cryptid of Wisconsin that is said to resemble a mythical werewolf.
Synapsids are between reptiles and mammals these are really fascinating animals back then. 🦎🐀
No, that's obsolete; no synapsid had a reptilian ancestor.
@@Dr.IanPlectBut the non-mammalian Synapsids shared the same common ancestor to Diapsid Sauropsids and were clearly closer cousins at the time.
@@Dr.Ian-Plect We're highly derived now, but what I'm really saying is that very basal Synapsids and Diapsids were both Amniote Tetrapods right?
And so cousins with more common features than with their highly derived bird and mammal descendants.
@@TedShatner10 I removed my reply as you didn't respond.
And now, a more serious post (after having a laugh at the Caseids' expense).
As a botanist, I'm always awed at the various "cryptogams" (seedless plants) now properly named "pteridophytes", the old name given to the group formed by polypodiophytes (ferns, horsetails) + lycopodiopsids (clubmosses, quillworts, etc.). These vascular plant types are more primitive than the "spermatophytes", which include all seed-producing plants, mostly the gymnosperms, which don't have actual flowers (conifers, cycads, ginkgos, etc ) and angiosperms (flowering plants).
Due to a lesser interest in plants in general, people are generally less familiar with paleobotany, and don't have a clear notion of what plants grew at the various eras and periods, despite the crucial importance of knowing what types of forests constituted the habitat of animals from Permian, Carboniferous, Silurian, Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous, etc It's all a blur, and there are countless errors in video material on dinosaurs, reptiles, and amphibians. Especially regarding angiosperms: their expansion as dominant forms of the flora started in the early Cretaceous. Forests older than 120 My ago should show giant cycads, sequoias, ginkgos, etc.,along with giant equisetales (horsetails) and ferns, as well as lycopodiopsids (giant clubmosses). I was pleased that you showed at least one illustration that showed this for a Carboniferous forest.
Understanding the physiology and ecology of paleofauna is intricately bound to that of the dominant plant forms of the respective period.
That's why Jurassic fauna should never be shown next to palm trees 😊
I just want to say you're very underrated like CHimerasuchus and Regretful Reads.
hopes channels like this get more love in the future,
Fascinating! Keep up the good work. Glad I subbed. I have always been interested in Synapsids and Therapsids since I found out about cladistics.
With how much we know about the evolution of our earliest (and I mean earliest) ancestors, it’s wild to know there are still people who think it’s all fake
There is probably a political/religious version of Rule 34: If a position exists in logical space, there will be people somewhere who have argued for it in 100% honesty.
I love and hate how many ancient species lives boiled down to "Man, this is a good life..... Hey what's that hellish maelstrom cresting the horizon?"
0:51 Doesn't that also apply to the environments of both Hell Creek and much of the Paleocene and Eocene during the Thermal Maximum?
Yes that’s right, although the Southern Hemisphere in the Carboniferous seems to have been pretty cold. Strangely, what is now Canada and Europe were the hottest and most tropical places on Earth at that time, the total opposite of modern times!
@Leo the British-Filipino
😂 It doesn't work any one way, especially considering 87% of earth's history is "pre Cambrian"
Best video yet, love learning about life from the Carboniferous and Permian Periods. Would you be able to do a video about Lysorophus?
If only another documentary like Walking With Monsters happened today, but just focused on the Permian itself. Separated by the Early Permian, Middle Permian and Late Permian. All with some more story added with speculation, for instance a Dimetrodon living in a flourishing swamp hunting amphibians but being outcasted by another (possibly larger) species of Dimetrodon who just visited in the location and wanted the food to themselves, a story about a Dimetrodon forced into arid landscapes to survive. A lot of cool stories could be created based on the ecology and environments of the times, especially showing how adaptable and generally good Dimetrodon was at surviving even in arid conditions. Though, Dimetrodon probably would prefer the more temperate and humid swamps and jungles filled with many delicious critters.
8:15 That was probably my favorite iteration of the "where do you work out?" meme lol
Beautiful
Cheery-oh!
I love prehistory and I lovd this channel,so that's epic.
Great vid, since TV and other such media seldom provide us with information about the stem mammals. Worse still, Dimetrodon is often mistaken for kind of a dinosaur.
However, the title is a bit misleading since those early ancestors of us certainly have ancestors themselves.
We better should say they are the first ancestors of us _we don't share with our pet lizards or birds_ if we have.
Very good. I'm still a little hazy about this period. Lots of new stuff since I was a freshman.
There's a recent theory that suggests warm bloodedness evolved once in the ancestor of both Synapsids and reptile lineages
Why is everyone imagining warm blooded animals from the start of amniote evolution? When warm blooded dinosaurs became accepted, suddenly everyone wanted to prove that every vertebrate group was warm blooded in the past. Meanwhile we have some Monitor lizards, turtles and large fish today that have elevated metabolism. Probably they would be considered warm blooded too if they were extinct. Also nobody of those researchers actually pondered about the need of warm bloodedness for a smallish tropical animal.
@@stefanostokatlidis4861 I agree, I believe the researchers drew their conclusion based upon erect posture something related to skeletal structure, basically the erect posture suggests elevated blood pressure, and the skeleton aids in the heating process, they found evidence in early synapsid skeletons and early reptile ancestors
@@bruceswinford4901 arboreal reptiles and amphibians stay upright all of the time without having significantly elevated blood pressure. As long as there is no competition from real endothelins, why cannot ectotherms develop erect posture? The field was still new and they could do it.
@@stefanostokatlidis4861 yeah I'm aware of that too, I think they mentioned something about the bones as well that gave further credence
Very interesting topic - thanks a lot for sharing this!
Wröh wröh wröh
Interesting, you bring to my attention we've evolved from something like that and as I'm pondering I can see through some of the renderings that some of the traits are apparent in today's society.
Looooooove me some Permian! Thank you for this video! I will definately rewatch it several times 😊
You must be a brilliant man to remember all this .
Mammal hair is actually heavily derived from basal synapsid (reptile like stem "mammal") scales (not so unlike with avian dinosaur feathers).
Very interesting how evolution works.
@@dr.polaris6423 Yeah, modern birds and modern mammals convergently became so similar in my opinion, avians are not really reptile diapsids in the same way we're not reptiliomorph synapsids, despite descending from them.
@@TedShatner10 birds are not so similar to mammals. Just most of the scientists of the past were mammalian chauvinists and tried to shoehorn birds into mammalianness.
@@stefanostokatlidis4861 Convergent evolution is a more powerful force than widely assumed (diapsid pterosaurs were warm blooded and had their form of fur) and very primitive "true" proto reptiles were our common ancestor.
@@TedShatner10 yes but they were not mammals and nobody considered them analogs to mammals.
I'm proud of my ancestors!
I think everyone dismisses how effective a claw can be when used as self defence weapon.
except Lemmy Kilmister, that is literally the topic of the Motörhead song "Claw"
Good work, you earned a subscriber, I'm looking forward to your sauropsid video
amazing video just amazing
I love this video
Thank you for the video. Once again, I didn't get a notice from RUclips.
@4:50 - Huh. Didn't know we had anything even vaguely significant at Joggins. We learn next to nothing here in Nova Scotia about our pre-historic wildlife. :(
There's actually a good amount of interesting and quite important Carboniferous fossil finds from this area!
For no particular reason, I think Ophiacodon is my favorite basal synapsid
Caseasaurians have such tiny heads it's comical. I wonder if large bodied Ophiacodontids could have killed large Caseasaurians by crushing their tiny skulls?
Even Sphenacodontians like Dimetrodon could do the same.
Good to see videos on clades and not just specific species or genera.
Mother in law says I'm a reptile. Idiot. Turns out I'm actually a synapsid.
Omg I love joggins I’ve been there every summer!
My favorite groups of prehistoric animals other than the ice age megafauna are the synapsids and early tetrapods.
Yess Synapsida
My daily walks are on the beach in along the Joggins cliffs, you can't take two steps without seeing traces of something cool.
So my great great great great great great x 100000000 grandparents are lizard like creatures? *Epic*
Hey Dr Polaris, what is Midnight Sun Productions? Is it a studio behind your videos? Your own studio? What?
I really enjoy your videos. I'm a lay person and new to the topic of paleontology. Your videos are great. ... One question off topic.. As a musician, I'm interested to know who plays the opening music for your videos. It's cool.
Cenozoic: Revenge of the Synapsids
There is an increasingly popular theory that vertebrates actually evolved from placoderms, as placoderms have been theorized to be the ancestors of sarcopterygians
"There is an increasingly popular theory that vertebrates actually evolved from placoderms, as placoderms have been theorized to be the ancestors of sarcopterygians"
- no, not all vertebrates, use your own words and have a think of a vertebrate subgroup that is appropriate!
Vertebrates showed up way before the sarcopterygians, vertebrata is a subphylum within chordata, anything after the pikaia had a vertebrae, that's like millions of years before sarcopterygia
Could you make a video on the evolution of raccoons and their family
Late Oligocene Africa when???
Why did Permian large herbivores end up with such tiny heads? Is it because threats were less and they didn’t need to develop a large brain? Are tortoises a good modern analog?
I was wondering the same thing, and yeah turtles are the only modern day terrestrial vertebrates where I have seen anything similar
I think my earliest ancestor was from the Archeon
Time traveller to the little lizard: “S’up gramps”.
🤘😎
Thank you!
Okay, I love that graphic at 8:13. I know they were covered in a different video on this channel, but I can't remember the name of those animals that look like someone stuck a T.rex's head on an alligator's body.
I believe it's Erythrosuchus
I notice that past creatures, both animals and plants, are like the gigantic versions of certain modern creatures. Today each of those similar environments of the past became small ecosystems sharing various other ecosystems found throughout the world. It's as though they were all downgraded to become a compact version of what existed before.
That is simply not true. You are looking at it the wrong way.
Maybe it was the one before that, or the one before that, but mostly definitely the one before THAT
That little tadpole knows he's a goner in the picture one minute 16 seconds. His face is priceless
Will you make a video about developmental plasticity?
Fascinating
How is it that the animal shown at 9:33 has 3 toes on one rear foot, but 5 toes on the other?
mutation
If I could travel back in time to any. I think it would be here or the carboniferous
Your videos are the best! But your banner image shows a Tyranosaurid on the left and a Shringasaurus on the right. Temporally, it would make twice as much sense having a cave man instead of the Shringasaurus!
Are you a professor at a Brtish University ?
What about that 2021 study on Chinlechelys by Lichtig and Lucas? That would recover turtles as pareiasaurids while they consider Pappochelys sauropterygid unrelated to turtles. As I undrestood it does't contradict genetic relation of turtles to other reptiles (?)
really good
I can see the family resemblance in some of the people I know.
7:11 How do you make the conclusion that it was "somewhat green"?
Wait... North America near equator.
Environment like Florida Everglades...
Are we all Florida... critters?
😳🤪
My ancestor
I thought our earliest ancestors were the first replicators🤔
@dz demon sure, it's the "earliest" I objected to 😃
They sure were! They didn't evolve from anything, they sprung from nothing and they are my earliest ancestors
👍 again (1 year later)
GO GRANDPA GO!
6:35 - They look creepy. Not silly.
I knew a Basil Synapsid in school…
I thought our earliest ancestors were fish.
Title is nonsense; our first ancestors predated synapsids by 3.7 billion years!
I forget the name of the creature but in the Permian era it was very similar to a monkey just imagine if the Permian era never faced an Extinction would we have creatures like the wookies from Star Wars or the brutes from Halo on planet Earth rather than Homo sapiens have evolved just think about it man?
The creature was called suminia i think
@@Minish4rk360 thank you.
Half the fun of these videos are reading all the upset creationist comments.
Anyone remember that South Patk episode where Mr Garrison talks about evolution?
Arthropod body size had nothing to do with oxygen
substantiate your claim
@Dr. Ian Plect consider the fact that *Meganeuropsis* which was the same size or slightly larger than *Meganeura*, lived in the Permian when oxygen levels were less than today
@@insectilluminatigetshrekt5574 "consider the fact that Meganeuropsis which was the same size or slightly larger than *Meganeura*, lived in the Permian when oxygen levels were less than today"
- this does nil to substantiate your claim and is actually wrong anyway!
- Meganeuropsis' temporal range is 290-283mya
- I checked oxygen levels then; about 27%, today; about 21%
- so, your flawed example (assuming a direct and accurate correlation between oxygen and arthropod size) actually demonstrates the opposite to your claim!
------------
As I thought when reading your comment; you haven't a clue.
World of warcraft music.
hardly earliest. chordates existed as s group back on the cambrian.
Our earliest ancestors go back much further than that.
Go grandpa!