Vertebrates

Question 1

Vertebrates

Answer 1

All animals with a vertebral column (backbone or spine).

Vertebrates include all fishes except hagfishes, plus mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians.

Question 2

Gnathosomata

Answer 2

Vertebrates with jaws. They include all land vertebrates and all fishes except lampreys, which are jawless, and hagfishes which lack jaws and vertebrae.

Question 3

Chondrichthyes

Answer 3

Jawed fishes with a skeleton made of cartilage rather than bone. (Cartilaginous fishes)

Sharks, Rays, Chimareas

Question 4

Osteichthyes

Answer 4

(Bony Vertebrates) - Bony fishes and all descendants.
They included all vertebrates with a mineralized skeleton — mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and most fishes.

Question 5

Sarcopterygii

Answer 5

(Lobe-finned fishes and tetrapods) - Vertebrates with either lobed fins or limbs (tetrapods), which arose from lobed fins.

Question 6

Tetrapods

Answer 6

Bony vertebrates with 4 limbs or limb like appendages.

The 1st land-living vertebrates, tetrapods include the earliest limbed vertebrate and all of its descendants, including those that have since lost their limbs, such as snakes.

Question 7

Amniotes

Answer 7

Tetrapods whose embryo grows inside a waterproof membrane called and amnion, enabling life outside bodies of water.

Question 8

Mammals

Answer 8

Animals with 3 middle-ear bones and a uniques jaw hinge.

Today’s mammals also have fur and mammary glands, but cannot be sure about the many fossil forms.

The early ancestors of mammals diverged from reptile-like amniotes more than 200 million years ago.

Question 9

Amphibians

Answer 9

Cold-blooded tetrapods with porous, glandular skin.

Today’s amphibians (frogs and toads, salamanders and newts, and caecilians) are descendants of early tetrapods that did not develop an amnion (waterproof egg membrane).

Question 10

Reptiles

Answer 10

Amniotes with thick skin, horny epidermal (skin surface) scales, and whose eggs have a mineralized shell.

This group includes warm blooded birds and other, scaly, cold-blooded reptiles.

Question 11

Lepidosaurs

Answer 11

Reptiles that shed skin in large pieces or as a whole.

Include tuataras, snakes, lizards, as well as worm lizards (amphisbaenians).

Question 12

Archosaurs

Answer 12

Reptiles whose teeth are sunk into sockets.

Their living representative include only crocodiles and birds, which are dinosaurs.

Question 13

Birds

Answer 13

Archosaurs with asymmetrical flight feathers (lost in some flightless species).

Many dinosaurs had feathers, but they were not flight feathers.

More recently evolved birds — not including the primitive tinamous and rarities — have many more shared features, including a horny, toothless bill, and a keeled breastbone.