Re: MESOZOIC MAMMALS

[Jonathon Woolf <jwoolf@erinet.com>]

Jeffrey Martz wrote:
> 
>        Sorry to clutter the list with this, so I'll try to include a
> little relevancy.  Please reply off list unless it has to do with number
> 6. I am looking for relatively up to date information and technical
> references on the following:
> 
> 1)  Triconodonts from the Cloverly Formation, in particular one that
>     should have been published around 1980 or so by Jenkins
> 
> 2) The nature of pelycosaur skin.  I have heared mention that it was more
>    likely to be glandular or keratenized then scaled, and I would like
>    some information.  Why is it assumed that scales are a "reptile"
>    (cladist usage) rather then amniote synapomorphy?  Are hairs derived
>    from scales, or derived in some other way from the epidermis?  My
>    Mammalogy T.A insinuated that beaver, rodent, etc... tail scales are
>    evoltuionary holdovers of eary synapsid scales.  Is he full of it?
> 
> 3) The status of amphilestids.  Are they still included with the
>    triconodonts?

The first two I can't help you with, but this one I can answer.  As of
1995, Amphilestidae was placed within the Triconodonta.  Reference "Late
Triassic to Early Jurassic Extinctions in Continental Tetrapods: Testing
the Pattern," author M. J. Benton, Chapter 22 of IN THE SHADOW OF THE
DINOSAURS: EARLY MESOZOIC TETRAPODS, c. 1995 from Cambridge University
Press.  

> 
> 4) Is the ventral process on docodont jaws homologous with the angular
>    process of therians, or the similar feature on monotremes?
> 
> 5) ANY sort of post-1979 (publication date of "Mesozoic Mammals", my main
>    reference) overveiw of Mesozoic mammal evolution.
> 
> 6) Papers or discussion of the place of mammals, particularly DIFFERENT
>    mammal groups, in Mesozoic small vertebrate ecology.

Re #4 I have no idea.  #s 5 and 6 can be answered by the same book cited
above, which is a collection of 25 recent, up-to-date, journal-quality
articles on nondinosaurian tetrapods of the Triassic and Early
Jurassic.  It contains two or three papers epcifically about faunal
assemblages and fossil ecosystems.  For #5, you might also try Carroll's
1988 text VERTEBRATE PALEONTOLOGY AND EVOLUTION, or an article by James
Hopson called "Synapsid Evolution and the Radiation of Non-Eutherian
Mammals," in MAJOR FEATURES OF VERTEBRATE EVOLUTION, Short Courses #7
(1994) from the Paleontological Society.  There's also some stuff about
Cretaceous mammals in DINOSAURS OF THE FLAMING CLIFFS by Mark Novacek,
which was just published in trade paperback.

-- JSW