What is the genus of creatures between reptiles and amphibians called, the possible lineage of human evolution?

Arpeggionist

It's not a genus, but a subfamily of reptiles, the synapsids. The best known of these creatures is the dimetridon, which lived in the triassic period. Dec 27 06, 2:13 AM

tragic_flawed

According to Lynn Margulis' "Microcosmos"- she believes the family of stem-reptiles were represented by the genus Seymouria....perhaps it may be conjecture on her part- but the origin and development of intermediary species, is interesting. Dec 27 06, 5:36 PM

tragic_flawed

http://www.cityofseymour.org/ls_seymouria/ls_seymouria.html Found a nice website... Dec 27 06, 6:04 PM

tragic_flawed

Nix that last reference site- it was found that Seymouria or such intermediary species was a false hypothesis- http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/natural_history_1_10.html Dec 27 06, 6:06 PM

Baloo55th

Tragic - that last site you posted (darwinisrefuted) is a Creationist site and their 'science' is highly suspect. While there may be inaccuracies in scientific sites, the aim of science is to eliminate the errors and discover what is actually correct. The Creationists start with a position and try to make everything fit into their preconceived framework. And to illustrate their position, I quote from the bottom of the page : "In brief, contrary to the evolutionist claim that living being evolved gradually, scientific facts reveal that they appeared on earth suddenly and fully formed." Scientific facts do no such thing outside the world of Creationism. Seymouria is a valid creature, whose position is still the subject of some argument but which has not been found false - by real scientists anyway. Seymouria is too late to be the 'ancestor' of reptiles, but it is an intermediate form in many ways. But if there is one intermediate form, it must have had ancestors of its own that may not yet have been discovered. We will never know the full extent of what went before us because most of it was recycled rather than preserved as fossils. Just think - if every skeleton had been preserved as a fossil, we'd be knee deep in fossils. Or even deeper. Those Creationist sites look scientific at first glance - but they reveal a negativity in approach and an inability (or reluctance) to really try to understand evolution. And they always come back to the same old thing without having proved anything. Dec 28 06, 6:04 AM

Baloo55th

Reading further into darwinisrefuted, I wonder if someone should tell them that feathers definitely came before birds (which they don't seem to know yet) and that young T. rexes probably had feathers? Dec 28 06, 6:11 AM

Arpeggionist

Birds, however, came before the T. rex. Even the archeopteryx is a Jurassic creature, and there was a discovery not long ago (less than a decade) of some other sort of bird from the triassic, which is still not recognized by all experts. Personally, I think that the quality of being warm blooded links birds and mammals more closely than most scientists realize (making birds' feathers serve the same function as a mammal's fur), and synapsids and other proto-mammals were known to exist in the early triassic period. Dec 28 06, 8:56 AM

Baloo55th

The point I was trying to make was that some reptiles had feathers - and used T. rex as an example most people (even the ones that write those sites) would have heard of. And feathers on reptiles is a whole different ball game from the one those Creationists are pushing on us. Dec 28 06, 9:16 AM

zbeckabee

Maybe they ordered their feathers from Sears & Roebuck. That would explain how they got their feathers before anyone else got their feathers because Sears & Roebuck is known for their fashion sense and dinosaurs have absolutely NO fashion flare. Dec 28 06, 9:58 AM