. The dinosaur book : the ruling reptiles and their relatives. Dinosaurs; Reptiles, Fossil. specialization that may be reached through the processes of evolution. Like the lizards, the snakes are of little paleontological importance. The Turtles One group of reptiles, which seemingly belongs to the Anapsida, has persisted into our own times. This is the group known as the Chelonia (kel-owN-e-ya) or Testudinata (tes-TOOD-e-na-ta), the animals which we commonly call turtles. True enough, the turtles don't look much like the primitive anapsids that inhabited the world in Permian and Triassic time
. The dinosaur book : the ruling reptiles and their relatives. Dinosaurs; Reptiles, Fossil. specialization that may be reached through the processes of evolution. Like the lizards, the snakes are of little paleontological importance. The Turtles One group of reptiles, which seemingly belongs to the Anapsida, has persisted into our own times. This is the group known as the Chelonia (kel-owN-e-ya) or Testudinata (tes-TOOD-e-na-ta), the animals which we commonly call turtles. True enough, the turtles don't look much like the primitive anapsids that inhabited the world in Permian and Triassic times. The reason for this dissimilarity is that the turtles have become highly modified rep- tiles and it is by the very reason of these modifications that the turtles have been able to live their lives down through the ages, while so many of their former contem- poraries became extinct. The ancestry of the turtles is obscured in the mists of geologic antiquity, but it is probable that they were descended from certain generalized anapsid reptiles. There is preserved, albeit all too imperfectly, the remains of a reptile known as Eunotosaurus (yoo-note-o-SAWB-us), from South Africa, a reptile that would seem in many ways to fulfill the role of ancestor to the turtles. Restorations by John C. Germann Evolution of the Turtles. leuro One line of modern turtles, the Pleurodira or side-neck turtles, is now found only in the Southern Hemisphere. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Colbert, Edwin H. (Edwin Harris), 1905-2001; Knight, Charles Robert, 1874-1953; American Museum of Natural History. New York : Published for the American Museum of Natural History by McGraw-Hill
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Keywords: ., bookauthoramericanmu, bookcentury1900, booksubjectreptilesfossil
