The evolution of endothermy in birds and mammals was one of the most important events in
the evolution of the vertebrates. Past tests of hypotheses on the evolution of endothermy in …

Several mutually incompatible theories exist about how and why endothermy evolved in
mammals and birds. Some take the primary function to have been thermoregulation …

Recent palaeontological data and novel physiological hypotheses now allow a timescaled
reconstruction of the evolution of endothermy in birds and mammals. A three‐phase iterative …

Endothermy, ie the endogenous production of metabolic heat, has evolved multiple times
among vertebrates, and several strategies of heat production have been studied extensively …

Many elements of mammalian and avian thermoregulatory mechanisms are present in
reptiles, and the changes involved in the transition to endothermy are more quantitative than …

During the past 30 years, the evolution of endothermy has been a topic of keen interest to
palaeontologists and evolutionary physiologists. While palaeontologists have found …

Ectothermy is a primitive state; therefore, a shared common ancestor of crocodiles,
dinosaurs, and birds was at some point ectothermic. Birds, the extant descendants of the …

Continuous, metabolically based maintenance of high and relatively stable body
temperature in the face of greatly fluctuating ambient temperature is among the most …

Avian and mammalian endothermy results from elevated rates of resting, or routine,
metabolism and enables these animals to maintain high and stable body temperatures in …

The whole‐body (tachymetabolic) endothermy seen in modern birds and mammals is long
held to have evolved independently in each group, a reasonable assumption when it was …