Fossils: The Evolution Of Mammals

Words: 474
Pages: 2

Fossils have been a way to learn about mammals that have gone extinct thousands or millions years ago. As new fossils are beginning to be found this is helping us learn more about early history. Some fossils found can dated back to the Jurassic Period. Although some of these fossil are millions of years old, they can still be show to be related to today’s mammals.
Researchers have found that mainly all the mammals in early history were small insect-eating creatures. There was a range of size. Some could be the size of a bumblebee or a squirrel. They mainly went out at night. After the dinosaurs went existent, the population of mammal increase greatly. The increase of mammals took millions of year to evolve. The mammals were becoming larger in size as the environment began to change so they had change with it to be able to adapt. Animals were so small during the Jurassic period because the dinosaur were most dominant. Mainly all of these animals were either herbivores and insectivores. Once the dinosaurs died off, these animals became more dominant and start to become larger over time.
…show more content…
Once the dinosaurs went existent this put a great amount of pressure on the mammals because many died off. Many mammals are hard to picture out because of the great change over the past millions of years. Although reptiles are cold blooded and mammals are warm blooded but many scientists say mammals may have come from reptiles. Mammal are said to have come from a group of “mammal-like” reptiles called therapsids. As the environment changes these mammals also needed to change. Temperatures in areas began be start changing over thousands of year which meant these mammals need to adapt to the temperature changes. The mammals started to grow hair to keep them