#mammal evolution

Survival of the newest: The mammals that survive mass extinctions aren't as 'boring' as scientists thought

via: Field Museum

When an asteroid hit the Earth 66 million years ago, it set off a devastating mass extinction. The dinosaurs (except for a few birds) all died out, along with lots of the mammals. But some small mammals survived, laying the groundwork for all the mammals alive today. For decades, scientists have assumed that mammals and their relatives that survived challenging times (like those during mass extinctions) made it because they were generalists that were able to eat just about anything and adapt to whatever life threw at them. A new study into the mammal family tree through multiple mass extinctions revealed that the species that survived aren't as generic as scientists had thought: instead, having new and different traits can be the key to succeeding in the aftermath of a catastrophe...

All of this is still based on one skull and scattered teeth from Mongolia, so it is inherently subject to change.

But get mad because they "stole" the wolf-monster ancestor of sheep from you, even though that wasn't remotely an accurate way of describing it in the first place.

Paired photographs of elephant shrew with elephant; tree shrew with gorilla; antechinus with kangaroo; true shrew with blue whale. Caption: “Each of the small shrew-like mammals shown here is more closely related to the large mammal that it's paired with than to the other small shrew-like mammals.”

In this context "is more closedly related to" means "has a more recent common ancestor with.”

So, the day before yesterday was full of significant palaeontological news. There’s Spinosaurus tail, Tullimonstrum probably being a sort of fish, but, most importantly for all: Adalatherium hui was described! Here’s a write up in sci-news. It’s a gondwanathere from Cretaceous, and a pretty big one at that (about cat-sized). And best thing about it? The skeleton is pretty complete, and articulated. In fact, it’s the most complete Mesozoic mammal (as per latest the study on them, gondwanatheres are mammals.) from the Southern Hemisphere. It’s a delightful weirdo, with a whole host of anatomical quirks. For example, it has more vertebrae than any Mesozoic mammals, and more foramina on its face than any known mammal. What’s up with that? It also has weird teeth. It’s such an awesome little critter, I wanted to do a reconstruction right away. And since press releases described it as badger-like my brain went… Badgers sit funny. So here are two versions of Adalatherium sitting like a dork. I’m not crazy about those, but I decided it’s time to stop tinkering with them, while they still resemble… Something. You can expect more Original Badgers in near future, hopefully better than those two. And yay for Mesozoic mammals that are more than just teeth!

How closely related are we to platypuses?

They are our 101 millionth cousins 6.8 million times removed.

Our last common ancestor looked pretty ugly tbh:

Inktober Day 12: Whale