LATE SURVIVING CYNODONT

[Ron Dass <radass@orion.neca.com>]

        I've been lurking on this list for about a year now; learned a lot,
had lots
of fun listening to arguments about bad monster movies, now I think I'll
dive in.
        First of all, I confess that I am at least as taken with ancient
mammals as 
with dinosaurs, so I followed this thread with interest. Here's my question.
I invite
your educated guesses and wild speculation.
        If presented with a *living* specimen of an advanced cynodont, could
one differentiate it from a "real" mammal without dissecting it? If memory
serves me, the advanced "mammal-like reptiles" (sorry cladists!) were so
mammal like that a more or less arbitrary skeletal feature was selected as a
kind of borderline that separated 
the fossil cynodonts from the mammals. A two part jawbone or something,
where the 
posterior part in true mammals migrated into the middle ear. Sorry, I don't
know too
many Latin bone names. Is it widely accepted that Cynodonts were fur
covered? How far 
back did this likely go? (furry Dimetrodon? What a concept!) I also remember an 
undergraduate zoology instructor saying that if monotremes had been found in
the 
fossil record before the living animals were seen they might well have been
classified
as reptiles. this class was taken eons ago in the precladist era.
        Incidently, on this very subject I once expained to tenth grade
science class
that if reptiles are in New York and mammals are in San Francisco, and I-80
is the 
evolutionary path between, the platypus took a left in Chicago and wound up
in Baton Rouge ;)


                                        Ron Dass
                                        rank amateur