The first amniotes (clade of vertebrates that today includes reptiles, mammals, and birds) are known from the early part of the Late Carboniferous. By the Triassic, this group had already radiated into the earliest mammals, turtles, and crocodiles (lizards and birds appeared in the Jurassic, and snakes in the Cretaceous). This contrasts sharply with the (possibly fourth) Carboniferous group, the baphetids, which have left no extant surviving lineages.
