It is often a matter of palaeontologists agreeing, rather than anything definite, that decides where one group starts and another stops. Cynodonts, as we have seen, had many mammal characters. Many of the differences are in soft tissues, which are usually not preserved in the fossil record. Fortunately, teeth and jaws can help us to decide where fossils belong. The big change from reptiles to mammals is at the back of the jaw.
Reptiles have seven bones in the lower jaw.
The dentary, which houses the teeth, the articular, which forms the jaw joint and five other bones. Cynodonts have an additional joint in their jaws. Mammals have only one bone in the lower jaw, the dentary. The other bones of the lower jaw have moved into the middle ear to help us to hear. The mammals appeared in the Late Triassic.