…and this is a 
Volaticotherium antiquus
Category: Fossils • Organisms
Posted on: December 13, 2006 5:22 PM, by PZ Myers
This sad jumble of bones is all that remains of Volaticotherium antiquus, a small rat-sized mammal that was recently dug up in China. There are two particularly outstanding things about this creature.
One is that browner layer in the rock: that isn't an artifact, it's a bit of soft tissue that was preserved, called a patagium. A patagium is a thin membrane stretched between the limbs, and is used for…flying! This animal probably lived much like a modern flying squirrel (although it is definitely not a squirrel), gliding from tree to tree.
The second surprise is the age. This is a Mesozoic mammal, from Chinese beds that are roughly dated to somewhere around the mid Jurassic to early Cretaceous—it was a contemporary of the dinosaurs. I'm tickled to imagine a diplodocid stretching up its long neck to strip the foliage from a tree branch, and this little guy squeaking angrily and leaping off to fly to the next tree.
Now one more thing we need, but are extremely unlikely to find, is a Mesozoic moose.
Mang J, Hu Y, Wang Y, Wang X, Li C (2006) A Mesozoic gliding mammal from northeastern China. Nature 444:889-893.
Comments
That moose would bite your sister.
Posted by: Miguelito | December 13, 2006 5:34 PM
Mesozoic moose bites can be quite nasti...
Posted by: Glenn | December 13, 2006 5:48 PM
Were there Mesozoic interspace toothbrushes?
Posted by: Tinni | December 13, 2006 6:04 PM
Looks like a 10 cm long Rorschach test to me. Good thing I work with unambiguous stuff like molecular microbial ecology and phylogenetics...
ConfusedMikeG
Posted by: MikeG | December 13, 2006 6:12 PM
>A patagium is a thin membrane stretched between the limbs, and is used for...flying! This animal >probably lived much like a modern flying squirrel (although it is definitely not a squirrel), gliding from >tree to tree.
First sentence, yes; second sentence, no. Flying and gliding, despite virtual synonymy in the general public, are scientifically two very different things. Flying is defined (at least in part) by the ability to generate one's own powered lift -- that is, one must be able to use muscles to gain and maintain altitude. Typically this involves flapping aerofoil wings. Gliders lack this ability -- they can occasionally go up if they happen to catch the right air currents, but this isn't "their own power." So birds, bats, pterosaurs, and numerous insects can fly; gliding lizards, gliding snakes, gliding frogs, gliding squirrels, and the misnamed "flying lemurs," as well as Volaticotherium, cannot fly (alas).
Posted by: dinogami | December 13, 2006 6:18 PM
So... dinogami... Are you saying that this creature isn't a flyer? Or that it isn't a glider?
Posted by: Kseniya | December 13, 2006 6:29 PM
Even better would be a Mesozoic flying moose.
Posted by: John | December 13, 2006 6:34 PM
No. In fact, it is theorized that the mouths of Allosaurids became extremely septic, due to the fatal combination of a diet (in part) of carrion, and a total lack of toothbrushing. Some authorities have gone so far as to suggest Allosaurid breath was so fetid natural selection eliminated all creatures unable to recognize the danger - effectively encoding a fear of dinosaurian halitosis into mammalian DNA, eventually inspiring the draconic 'breath weapon' notion so favored in fantasy literature.
Posted by: llewelly | December 13, 2006 6:46 PM
Note from Fearless Leader says we must find Cretaceous mooseberry bush, Natasha.
How we do that, Boris darlink?
Only one way, Natasha, first we must find Moose and Squirrel!
Why, Boris, why is it always Moose and Squirrel, Moose and Squirrel?
Believe me, Natasha, I don't write this stuff.
Posted by: Doc Bill | December 13, 2006 6:48 PM
I say that thing had wings but couldnt fly. It just had wings for fun kinda like a penguin.
My theory is that its mouth and teeth weren't effective weopons on thier own so it adopted a Kamakaze type hunting strategy for killing its prey whereby it would pounce teeth first onto unsuspecting prey from the top branches of a tree.
This one missed!!
If it could glide or fly some of its relatives would be around today!! :D
Posted by: Daron Jones | December 13, 2006 7:00 PM
There's a "wayback machine" joke in here somewhere.
Posted by: craig | December 13, 2006 7:46 PM
Investigation via a Wayback Machine is called for. Paging Mr. Peabody!
Posted by: Mark Centz | December 13, 2006 8:56 PM
haw.... moose --- flying squirrel.. i get it now!
Posted by: djlactin | December 14, 2006 12:36 AM
sorry daron, no time to reply.
gotta go exercise my pteranodon.
later maybe.
Posted by: djlactin | December 14, 2006 12:39 AM
Ok, silly question here, but why is some soft tissue (like the thin membrane here) preserved in some way while most other tissue never is? Does it have to do with the environmental conditions or the tissue type? Or, luck perhaps?
Posted by: Shelley | December 14, 2006 5:01 AM
Great to find such fossils and knowledge advances a little.
But sad that we can't save the Baiji (China freshwater dolphin) from extinction after its 20 million years evolution.
http://evolutiondiary.com/2006/12/14/baiji-chinas-freshwater-dolphin-functionally-extinct/
Posted by: dualmp | December 14, 2006 7:58 AM
A flying mouse? That puts New Zealand's newly discovered waddling mouse in the shade - although the NZ one could have been a RAFTING waddling mouse, in which case it wins first prize for the pure silliness of the images evoked in this non-scientific head.
(Abstract here, with open access article available from the same page.)
Posted by: BadAunt | December 14, 2006 8:35 AM
...why is some soft tissue (like the thin membrane here) preserved in some way while most other tissue never is?
According to the paper, "[t]he soft structures are preserved as impressions". Before the tissue itself decayed, it managed to leave an impression that remained when the substrate hardened. This is uncommon, but not unheard of. A classic example of this is the set of feather impressions around the best archaeopteryx fossils.
Skin (think "leather") and hair, like feathers, decay relatively slowly. The remains were then buried soon enough after death and the sediment remained undisturbed until it hardened such that the rock retained a "print" of the original tissue.
Posted by: JohnT | December 14, 2006 10:46 AM
>So... dinogami... Are you saying that this creature isn't a flyer? Or that it isn't a glider?
It certainly seems to be a glider, but it wasn't a flyer. This isn't to say that the animal isn't truly remarkable -- it is for many reasons -- but while it is a spectacular instance of convergent evolution, it has nothing to do with the origin of mammalian flight. It did not have wings (airfoils) -- instead, it had more or less the equivalent of a high-control parachute (although parachuting is something different from gliding -- parachuting is essentially controlled falling; gliding has more of a horizontal motion component to it). Most people who study flight and flight origins in various tetrapods (I'm not one of them) find that the kinds of patagia that connect wrists to ankles, as seems to be the case in Volaticotherium as well as gliding squirrels, "flying lemurs," sugar gliders, etc., are wholly unrelated to the evolution of wings -- this particular form of patagium cannot effectively become a wing. Instead, they are their own fascinating -- but not flying -- adaptation.
Posted by: dinogami | December 14, 2006 10:51 AM
I confess, I was guilty of sloppy terminology, going on the "flying" squirrel analogy. These animals were not flyers, they were gliders.
Posted by: PZ Myers | December 14, 2006 11:44 AM
dinogami: It certainly seems to be a glider, but it wasn't a flyer. This isn't to say that the animal isn't truly remarkable ...
Ok, thanks for the clarification - I assumed it was a glider from the description, but your first post left me a little confused about whether or not you thought it was..
PZ Myers: I confess, I was guilty of sloppy terminology, going on the "flying" squirrel analogy. These animals were not flyers, they were gliders.
I dunno Professor, I wouldn't say "sloppy" - everyone knows flying squirrels are actually gliders. Right? But I guess maybe you ought to have said "...squeaking angrily and jumping off to glide to the next tree" - an image that tickles me, too!
This all brings to mind the squirrel glider which, like the flying squirrel, is also a glider - but is not a squirrel!
I love this stuff. It's fun to be a geek. :-)
Posted by: Kseniya | December 14, 2006 3:32 PM