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At the roots of the mammalian family tree

Nature volume 398, pages 283–284 (1999)Cite this article

An exceptionally complete skeleton, dating back roughly 140-150 million years, offers our closest look yet at the last common ancestor of modern mammals.

Mesozoic mammals are among the most challenging and prized entries on a fossil hunter's list of discoveries. The essence of the challenge is size — the Mesozoic history of mammals was played out by tiny animals. Few specimens survived the destructive agencies of fossilization, and those that did are supremely difficult to find and collect. Most are fragmentary, and most named species are based on isolated teeth and jaws. In nearly two centuries of searching, only a few precious complete specimens have been recovered and, without better fossils, long stretches of mammalian history have remained in the dark. But, on page 326 of this issue, Ji, Luo and Ji1 describe one of the most complete and exquisitely preserved specimens ever found. It comes from the same Late Jurassic/Early Cretaceous deposit of Liaoning, China, that recently yielded spectacular feathered dinosaurs2 and one other complete mammal skeleton3. The latest discovery helps to fill a wide gap in the fossil record, and brings new information to classic problems on the origin and interrelationships of early mammals.

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Figure 1: Timescale of mammalian evolution.

References

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  1. the Department of Geological Sciences and the Vertebrate Paleontology Laboratory, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, 78712, Texas, USA

    Timothy Rowe

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Rowe, T. At the roots of the mammalian family tree. Nature 398, 283–284 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/18546

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