. Annals of the South African Museum = Annale van die Suid-Afrikaanse Museum. Natural history. Ecca Series Dinocephalia Gorgonopsia Dicynodontia Therocephali i Fig. 2. The explosion of the therapsid suborders in the Karoo. The Dinocephaha, arising in Russia in the late Lower Permian, entered the Karoo Basin as a diversified suborder and immediately became the dominant therapsids. But they quickly shot their bolt and from the middle of the Middle Permian declined rapidly to become extinct before the Upper Permian. Thus ended the first sterile therapsid trend towards an actively mobile life on f
. Annals of the South African Museum = Annale van die Suid-Afrikaanse Museum. Natural history. Ecca Series Dinocephalia Gorgonopsia Dicynodontia Therocephali i Fig. 2. The explosion of the therapsid suborders in the Karoo. The Dinocephaha, arising in Russia in the late Lower Permian, entered the Karoo Basin as a diversified suborder and immediately became the dominant therapsids. But they quickly shot their bolt and from the middle of the Middle Permian declined rapidly to become extinct before the Upper Permian. Thus ended the first sterile therapsid trend towards an actively mobile life on firm land of some altitude. The Gorgonopsia and Dicynodontia, entering the Karoo Basin fully fledged, but in a sub- ordinate faunistic role, became the dominant therapsids in the Upper Permian. The predatory Gorgonopsians came to an abrupt end as the second sterile trend towards life on drier ground when the marshes of the Lystrosaurus zone made life for their herbivorous prey impossible on dry land, coupled with the predators' inability to pursue the surviving lystrosaurs into the marshes. The herbivorous Dicynodontia, adapted to upland life, found the swampy conditions of the Lystrosaurus zone all but impossible and only the lystrosaurs could adapt themselves, but this temporary success proved their final undoing and in the later dry to arid Triassic only the kannemeyerids could eke out an existence. Thus ends the third therapsid attempt towards an active mobile life on firm land. The Therocephalia entered the Karoo Basin as a diversified suborder with two families in a strong predaceous role and two in an insectivorous role. The predators flourished in the Middle Permian but were ousted from this role by the gorgonopsians in the Upper Permian. The more insectivorous families continued successfully into the later Triassic, but where overshadowed faunistically (except for their cynodont offshoot) by the upsurging sauropsids. This fourth trend of the therapsids towards upland ac
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectnaturalhistory, booky
