56-million-year-old fossils complicate long-held theories about mammalian body size
July 6, 2018, University of Calgary
The discovery of a new species of mammal in Alberta's fossil record has shaken up some long-held beliefs about other species in its lineage.
The ancient Catopsalis kakwa (C. kakwa) was only about the size of a squirrel, and weighed between 400 and 600 grams. What it lacks in size, however, it makes up for in terms of its implications for previous research proposing the evolution of larger body mass in multituberculates, rodent-like mammals named for their teeth that have many cusps, or tubercles, arranged in rows.
Dr. Craig Scott, Ph.D., curator of fossil mammals at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, spent much of 2017 conducting fieldwork in Alberta—where C. kakwa was discovered. Scott, along with Dr. Anne Weil, Ph.D., of Oklahoma State University, and Dr. Jessica Theodor, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, worked together to determine the identity and lineage of the fossilized species and analyze its tooth row to determine what it might have looked like. Their results were recently published in the Journal of Paleontology.
Read more at:
https://phys.org/news/2018-07-million-year-old-fossils-complicate-long-held-theories.html#jCp
