Where your teeth come from

When I was a little kid, I had a toy model of a dinosaur called Dimetrodon. Being a young boy, I had read approximately 37,000,326 picture books about dinosaurs and I knew Dimetrodon was not a true dinosaur, along with the pleiseosaurs, the pterasaurs, and Joan Rivers. The Dimetrodon was part of a class commonly known as the protosaurs, who still get to be in all of the cool dioramas, but they don't ever get invited to the afterparty.

According to leading evolutionary scientists (Steve and Rick,) Dimetrodon was actually a Synapsid (literally, Sid with a synap) which were lizard-like animals which had little in common with the true dinosaurs, and are the ancestors to the modern mammals.

Call me Granddaddy D.

First of all, Dimetrodon's name was all wrong for a dinosaur. Every schoolboy knows that the good dinosaur names all end in -saurus and -icus and -rex. Dimetrodon (scientific name Dimetrodonald Dinkum) just doesn't make the cut.

Also, Dimetrodon's skull was different, and he was often chosen last for dinosaur dodgeball because of it. Recent developments in skull technology gave Dimetrodon a different place to attach his jaw (back by his pelvis) than previous animals, giving Dimetrodon the advantages of being able to chew and sing seranades to their mates.

In addition, Dimetrodon was one of the first to develop what would in later mammals become the three bones of the inner ear: the hammer, anvil, and microphone. This is in contrast to lizards and birds, who don't have ears. Look at them. They don't.

There is still another delopment that the Dimetrodon passed along to modern mammals, as can be seen from the following diagramme:

FIG 117-D

So Dimetrodon was obviously very crucial to the development of all modern mammals, unless you don't believe Steve and Rick.