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Dinosauria 17

Dinosaurs proper, including the birds that survived them.

  • Theropoda 9 Bipedal, mostly carnivorous, hollow-boned.
  • Sauropodomorpha 3 Long-necked, small-headed, graviportal.
  • Ornithischia 5 Bird-hipped plant eaters: plated, armoured, horned, beaked.

Reptiles (non-dinosaur) 4

Animals routinely filed next to dinosaurs and just as routinely mislabelled as one.

  • Pterosauria 1 Flying archosaurs with a membrane wing on one finger.
  • Mosasauridae 1 Open-ocean squamates with a flipper-paddled tail.
  • Plesiosauria 1 Four-paddle swimmers with a rigid trunk.
  • Ichthyosauria 1 Dolphin-shaped, live-bearing, ringed vertebrae.

Synapsida & mammals 2

The line that led to us. The sail-backs are in here, not with the dinosaurs.

  • Sphenacodontidae 1 Permian predators with a neural-spine sail.
  • Cetacea 0 Fully aquatic mammals with hind limbs reduced to vestiges.
  • Proboscidea 1 Elephants and their extinct kin; tusks are modified incisors.
  • Carnivora 0 Shearing carnassial teeth, four or five toes, no hooves.

Stem vertebrates 1

Jawed and jawless fish that carry the earliest bone in the record.

  • Placodermi 1 Arthrodire and antiarch head shields with a neck joint.

Invertebrates 3

Everything with an exoskeleton or no skeleton at all. Most of the fossil record by count.

  • Radiodonta 1 Stem arthropods with a ring of toothed grasping appendages.
  • Lobopodia 0 Soft-bodied panarthropods walking on stubby unjointed legs.
  • Trilobita 1 Calcite eyes, a three-lobed axis, and moult halves everywhere.
  • Insecta 1 Six legs, two wing pairs, tracheal respiration.
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Published 2026-09-18