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Home Science Geology

Sabre tooth ferret like mammal unearthed in Patagonia

Mihai Andrei by Mihai Andrei
November 3, 2011
in Geology
Reading Time: 1 min read
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A recent discovery of an extinct mammal called Cronopia promises to help scientists trace the ascent and spread of mammals.

Even though it looks rather taken from a cartoon than from reality, Cronopio dentiacutus was the real deal. It had a long snout, huge sharp canines, and a powerful set of jaw muscles to bite and chew its prey.

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The animal lived 94 million years ago, well into the age of the dinosaurs, in today’s South America, and it had quite a lot of competition in the fight for survival. Its fossilized remains were found in Patagonia by a team of researchers led by Guillermo Rougier of the University of Louisville; the results were published in Nature.

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The finding is extremely important because mammal fossils from the age of the dinosaurs are extremely rare, and they yield valuable information. Even when they are found – it is usually just jaws or some scattered bones; full skeletons are indeed extremely rare.

“Our knowledge of the first two-thirds of mammalian evolution, which extends from the first record of a mammal about 220m years ago to the end of the Cretaceous period 65.5m years ago, is therefore terribly incomplete,” wrote De Muizon.

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Tags: ferretfossilmammalsabre tooth
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Mihai Andrei

Mihai Andrei

Andrei's background is in geophysics, and he's been fascinated by it ever since he was a child. Feeling that there is a gap between scientists and the general audience, he started ZME Science -- and the results are what you see today.

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