What were tritylodonts?
Q: What were tritylodonts?
A: Tritylodonts were small to medium-sized mammal-like cynodonts. They varied in size from a rabbit to a beaver and had three cusps (bumps) on their teeth, which gave them their name.
Q: What did tritylodonts eat?
A: Tritylodonts were herbivorous, chewing through vegetation such as stems, leaves, and roots. They had no canine teeth, just incisors and cheek teeth. The jaw worked by grinding forward and backwards, shredding the food between the ridges of the teeth.
Q: How long did tritylodonts survive?
A: Tritylodonts were the longest surviving of all the non-mammalian therapsids. They appeared in the latest Triassic period and persisted through the Jurassic until the middle of the Cretaceous.
Q: Were tritylodonts warm-blooded?
A: It is very clear that tritylodonts were warm-blooded animals based on fossil evidence found worldwide including Antarctica.
Q: What are multituberculates?
A: Multituberculates are mammals that have quite a few parallels with tritylods (which are outside of the mammal line).
Q: When did multituberculates appear?
A: Multituberculates appeared during middle Jurassic period.
Q: How did multituberculates outcompete earlier groups like tritylods?
A:When multituberculates appeared they were in direct competition with earlier groups like trityldons and eventually outcompeted them due to lack of competition from other mammal-like types which were either carnivores or insectivores at this time according to Kermack's conclusion .
