WASHINGTON (Reuters) – There is no doubt that scientists have had much luck finding an animal of the age of dinosaurs that rewrites our understanding of early mammals.
Investigators said Wednesday that Madagascar had unearthed the fossil of a creature similar to a groundhog largest which lived 66 million years and, with about 9 kilos, was huge compared to most mammals that lived in the Mesozoic.
Judging by the skull, in good condition, I was a very active herbivore with strong jaws, keen eye, an ear well developed and an exceptional view in low light, they said.
His name is “Vintana sertichi”. Vintana means luck in Malagasy language, referring to the fortuitous circumstance that led to his discovery.
During the excavations in 2010 in Madagascar, scientists found a block of 68 kilos of weight packed fish fossils. They used a CT Stony Brook University in New York to inquire within. Fortunately, they found more than just fish.
“We were shocked when we found the skull of a mammal staring directly from the screen,” said paleontologist David Krause, who led the study published in the journal Nature.
Experts have spent half a year in extracting block skull length of 12.5 inches.
Krause says Vintana is the second largest mammal known from the age of dinosaurs when most of them were the size of shrews, only behind Repenomamus, similar to a badger and even more ancient Cretaceous period.
This skull, well preserved despite lacking the lower jaw, has provided the first evidence of lifestyle and relationships with other mammals of the animal group that owns the new discovery, called gondwanaterios.
“In essence, stirring all the family tree of the first mammals and helps us to reorganize,” Krause said. The discovery allows us to estimate the appearance of the first mammals approximately two hundred million years ago, he said
(Reporting by Will Dunham; In Gabriel Sanchez).
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