#mammaliaforms

First winged mammals from the Jurassic period discovered

Two 160 million-year-old mammal fossils discovered in China show that the forerunners of mammals in the Jurassic Period evolved to glide and live in trees. With long limbs, long hand and foot fingers, and wing-like membranes for tree-to-tree gliding, Maiopatagium furculiferum and Vilevolodon diplomylos are the oldest known gliders in the long history of early mammals.

The new discoveries suggest that the volant, or flying, way of life evolved among mammalian ancestors 100 million years earlier than the first modern mammal fliers. The fossils are described in two papers published this week in Nature by an international team of scientists from the University of Chicago and Beijing Museum of Natural History.

"These Jurassic mammals are truly 'the first in glide,'" said Zhe-Xi Luo, PhD, professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago and an author on both papers. "In a way, they got the first wings among all mammals."

Qing-Jin Meng, David M. Grossnickle, Di Liu, Yu-Guang Zhang, April I. Neander, Qiang Ji, Zhe-Xi Luo. New gliding mammaliaforms from the Jurassic. Nature, 2017; DOI: 10.1038/nature23476