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VOL.439 NO.7073 DATED 12 JANUARY 2006
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* Relics: Fossil find challenges mammalian evolution
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[4] Relics: Fossil find challenges mammalian evolution (pp195-200)
Researchers have found a new fossil that challenges conventional wisdom
about the evolution of early mammals. In this week's Nature, Gang Li and
Zhe-Xi Luo describe a well-preserved skeleton - a now extinct spalacotheroid
symmetrodont mammal - found in the fossil-rich Lower Cretaceous Yixian
Formation in China.
Although this mammal has enough advanced features to be identified as a
close relative of modern therians (mammals such as marsupials and
placentals), parts of its skeleton are also unexpectedly un-therian. In
particular, it shows more primititive, platypus-like features in the lumbar
ribs, pelvis and hindlimbs.
The unusual combination of primitive and advanced features in the new mammal
is probably the result of 'functional convergence', in which the lumbar ribs
and other features were lost and then reacquired later for a specific
purpose.
Like many other mammals in the Early Cretaceous, spacalotheroids seem to
have evolved initially in Eurasia and then dispersed to North America.
CONTACT
Zhe-Xi Luo (Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
Tel: +1 412 622 6578; E-mail: [email protected]
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