The name is often stated to mean "Morgan's tooth", but that would be Morganodon in Greek. Rather, it comes from a Latinization of Morganuc, "South Glamorgan in Domesday Book", the county where it was discovered by Walter Georg Kühne, so it means "Glamorgan tooth". It has acquired the nickname Morgie in the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.
Morganucodon was likely nocturnal, and spent the day in a burrow. The diet appears to have been insects and other small animals, again much like a modern shrew. Being older than the appearance of the marsupial and placental mammals, it likely laid eggs.
However, a consensus accepted by most scientists states that mammals as a group are defined by the possession of a special, secondarily evolved jaw joint between the dentary and the squamosal bones, which has replaced the primitive reptilian one between the articular and quadrate bones in all modern mammalian groups. Morganucodon is special in this respect, because apart from still having the primitive hinge, it has also evolved the derived mammalian one and thus features a double jaw joint. It is for this reason, and additional evidence pointing to diphyodonty and determinate growth, that Morganucodon is now usually considered a true mammal. (Reptiles repeatedly replace their teeth throughout life, known as "polyphyodonty", while mammals grow only two sets of teeth, in "diphyodonty".)
Category:Mammaliaformes Category:Triassic mammals Category:Jurassic mammals Category:Transitional fossil
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