Re: early dog

On 1/27/25 2:25 AM, x wrote:

On 12/17/24 11:06, erik simpson wrote:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-54425-5
>
The earliest dog relative found so for; a gorgonopsian ~270 Mya.

 
Isn't the word 'relative' unclear?
 
Kind of like 'kind', 'species', or 'hybrid'?
 
I am thinking that wolves, coyotes, and jackals can
all cross and produce viable offspring, but foxes
can not?
 
Then there is some of the South American canids
that are closer than foxes but more distant than
say wolves from coyotes and jackals?
 
What kind of kind is 'kind'?
 

In this context, I was talking about a pretty silly time-travel TV
serial of some time back.  I mentioned it once in a episode that
featured a gorgonopsian coming to the present through some sort of time
portal.  Some on else mentioned that one of the characters in the
serialhad a pet therapsid.  Therapsidae is a clade of paleozoic
"mammals", containing among other things gorgonopsians which were the
apex predators of the time.  "Mammals" isn't a good fit for any of these
animals, as they were remove from true mammals by hundreds of millions
of years.  Synapsid is a better term.  I don't recall which of the many
therapsids was the pet.  For that matter we and all living mammals are
also therapsids.