found a really fucking weird extinct mammal just now called Morotodon aenigmaticus. what is weird about morotodon is that it is a single tooth of a metatherian found in uganda. now what makes this weird?
well, metatherians have never been found in uganda before and barely in africa. the metatherians that had been found in africa before are separated by AT LEAST 7 million years. what is a metatherian you may ask. well the only living species of metatherians are all marsupials. all placental mammals are eutherians, including humans. our guy morotodon is not a marsupial though, he is in the extinct family herpetotheriidae which are considered to be a close "sister" to marsupials. the time when morotodon existed was a time of great change for metatherians, other families of them were going extinct right and left due to the prominence of eutherians while marsupials began to diversify and spread out in australia and the americas.
morotodon is the ONLY member of the family herpetotheriidae to have EVER made it to africa and one of three of the family to make it to the miocene along with herpetotherium in the united states and amphiperatherium in western europe. how did a line of metatherians survive for millions of years in africa completely undetected? what adaptations did morotodon have that allowed it to compete with eutherians for so long? will we ever find more fossils of morotodon? are there paleontologists actively looking for morotodon? is this all a scam? should i go to sleep because it's 3 am? we might never know
