320 million years ago, mammals and reptiles reached an evolutionary parting of the ways. We've now sequenced a lizard genome for the first time ever, and it's vastly different from our own...but in a few crucial ways, it's shockingly similar.
This is Dimetrodon, the world's top predator about 270 million years ago. Living before the dawn of the dinosaurs, this striking creature was actual a distant ancestor of mammals like us. Now we've discovered the most complete Dimetrodon skeleton ever.
The complex evolutionary relationships between birds and dinosaurs has only really started to become clear in the last 15 years. But one brave thinker in 1897 knew the real truth: it was all down to birds and reptiles doing it.
The now-extinct Myotragus balearicus, or "mouse goat," stood a mere 19 inches high, but its small stature is by no means its most unusual trait. Paleontologists have determined that this diminutive goat had more in common with reptiles than mammals.