Reptiles

The amniotes have arrived to dominate the land! The very first amniote vertebrates, named so for their amniotic eggs that did not have to hatch in water, appeared in the Late Carboniferous. Major shifts in climate during the Permian opened new niches which favoured those who were no longer tied to aquatic environments.

The end-Permian extinction wiped out many of the unusual early reptiles, paving the way for many reptilian lineages to appear during the Triassic, including early turtles, crocodilians, dinosaurs, and early lizards. Lizards became more common in the fossil record from the Late Jurassic, when the first snakes also appeared.