Therapsids :: Biology Essays Research Papers

The Amazing Cheesy Adventures of Professor Sanderson's Paleobiology Class! Part 1: Therapsids I hope you guys have as much fun reading this as I did writing it. ^_^ *** The Amazing Cheesy Adventures of Professor Sanderson's Paleobiology Class! Investigation 1: Where did mammals come from? Or: Therapsids! ** Professor Sanderson's class was popular. Partly this was because he was a well-meaning psyinstructor; the images he crafted were neat, cohesive, and usually entertaining. Mainly, though, it was because he was a young male teacher at an all-girls' college, who had the fortune to resemble Jai from "Queer Eye For the Straight Guy." These two factors led to an unnaturally high enrollment in Paleobiology 101. No less than fifty-two girls sat chittering in the classroom before he appeared each day, punctually, at 10 a.m. Most were more intrigued by *his* anatomy than that of the long-dead tetrapods to which he devoted his lectures. Today's attendance was especially high. It was a Field Trip day. The term wasn't literal. There was no trip involved---simply the students closing their eyes and falling into the trance-like state from which the professor led their excursions. There, in the collective canvass of their psyches, he would build that day's lesson, sculpting visceral images from his expansive knowledge of biology and his even more expansive creativity. Today's lesson was mammalian origins. "Where do we come from?" he had asked, by way of preamble. "We all know the basic answer, or think we do. Apes, right? And apes from primates, and primates from mammals, all well and good. But where do mammals come from? I mean, what did mammals evolve from, and what were the major evolutionary steps they took to get there? Doesn't that sound fascinating? " The class eyed him warily. A few actually listened. The rest swooned. "Today we're going to try and explore that question. If you'll all take out your textbooks, flip to page 137, lean back, orient your touchpads, and close your eyes..." he waited while the actions were performed. "We'll be going to the Permian. That's the time right before the Triassic period, which started the age of the dinosaurs. It's approximately 300 million years in the past." (1) He briefly surveyed the class, then looked thoughtful for a moment. "Wait. I guess I should give you a little background first," he relented. "The main thing we're going to see today is a group of animals called the therapsids.