The latest Nature reveals a new primitive mammal fossil collected in the Mesozoic strata of the Yan mountains of China. It's small and unprepossessing, but it has at least two noteworthy novelties, and first among them is that it represents another step in the transition from the reptilian to the mammalian jaw and ear.
Here's the beautiful little beast; as you can see, it's very small, and we need to look very closely at some details of its morphology to see what's special about it.
(click for larger image)
Main part of the holotype (Nanjing University-Paleontology NJU-P06001A). b, Skeletal restoration (dorsal view). Abbreviations: ag, angular (ectotympanic ring); am, acromion (scapula); as, astragalus; at, atlas (cervical vertebra, c1); ax, axis (c2); c?, canine?; c5-7, cervical vertebrae 5-7; ca3 and ca8, caudal vertebrae 3 and 8 (distal caudals are missing); cl, clavicle; cm, calcaneum; cod, coronoid process (dentary); cos, coracoid process (scapula); cp, carpals; dc, dentary condyle; dpc, deltopectoral crest (humerus); ec, ectepicondyle (humerus); en, entepicondyle; ep, epipubis; fe, femur; fi, fibula; hu, humerus; hy, hyoid elements; i1-2, incisors 1 and 2; il, ilium; in, incus; is, ischium; j?, jugal?; l1 and l8, lumbar vertebrae 1 and 8; lr2-7, lumbar ribs 2-7; lt, lesser tubercle (humerus); m1-4, lower molars 1-4; ma, malleus; mc, Meckel's cartilage (ossified); mg, Meckel's groove (dentary); mp, metacarpals; mt, metatarsals; mx, maxillary; p1-2, premolars 1 and 2; pb, pubic; ph, phalanges; ra, radius; sc, scapula; sq, squamosal; stb, sternum and sternabrae; s1-3?, sacral vertebrae 1 and 2 (and possibly sacral vertebra 3?); t1, t10 and t18, thoracic vertebrae 1, 10 and 18; ti, tibia; tr1-2, tr6 and tr15-18, thoracic ribs 1, 2, 6 and 18; ti, tibia; ul, ulna.
The first significant feature to examine is the jaw. This animal is from the Mesozoic, and a time when evolution was generating some radical changes in the feeding and sensory structures of the mammalian lineage. So first, a little background.
The primitive tetrapod jaw is a compound structure built up from multiple bones. In embryonic development, a rod-like structure called Meckel's cartilage is first to form; in modern mammals, it is resorbed later in development, and really only forms a temporary scaffold. The dentary, as you might guess from the name, is the tooth-bearing portion. Farther back are several bones, including the angular and the articular, which contribute to the body of the structure and its articulation with the skull. One of the roles of these bones is to connect to the auditory apparatus of the cranium—the jaw conducts vibrations to these bones, which then transmits them to the organs of hearing. This is not a particularly sensitive way to sense sound, since it means sound waves traveling through the air (or the ground) are going to have to be picked up by a high impedance element, the bulky jaw, before being transmitted to the ear.
In the early mammalian lineage, there is a pattern of progressive reduction of the various secondary jaw elements and an expansion of the dentary bone to take over the whole job of the jaw. We have an excellent record of the transformation of the jaw and skull elements in mammalian evolution — in short, what we see is that everything but the dentary gets smaller and smaller, and gets pushed farther and farther back towards the skull. We have transitional forms that have double articulations of the jaw with the skull—one between the old articular bone and the quadrate bone of the skull, and another between the dentary and the squamosal (the current jaw joint in modern mammals)—and then forms where the old hodge-podge of bones have been cast free of the jaw altogether.
In us, the old articular and quadrate bones have completely lost their role in supporting the jaw as a joint and instead have become imbedded in the middle ear of mammals, suspended with the stapes between two delicate membranes to specialize in conducting sound vibrations to the inner ear. What does the hearing apparatus look like in Yanoconodon?
Start by looking at a, b, c, and d in this diagram. Highlighted in blues and purples at the back of the jaw are these small bones in Morganucodon (a) and Yanoconodon (b). In d is the jaw of Repenomamus, a large Cretaceous mammal. Don't miss c—that small object is the collection of middle ear bones from Ornithorhyncus, better known as the platypus.
(click for larger image)
a, Mammaliaform Morganucodon (medial view); a-1 and a-2 label schematic transverse sections at the levels of the malleus and the ectotympanic. In Morganucodon, the middle ear maintains both an anterior connection to the mandible via the Meckel's cartilage, and a mediolateral contact to the mandible. b, Eutriconodont Yanoconodon (medial view, composite restoration of mandible and middle ear from NJU-P06001A and B). b-1 and b-2 label transverse sections at the levels of the malleus and the ectotympanic. The middle ear retains the anterior connection to the mandible via ossified Meckel's cartilage (yellow), but is mediolaterally separated from the posterior part of the mandible because of the twist and curvature of Meckel's cartilage (red arrows in b). c, the ectotympanic (blue), malleus (green) and incus (brown) of modern Ornithorhynchus: the shape and proportion of the ear bones are similar in Ornithorhynchus and Yanoconodon. d, Eutriconodont Repenomamus: ossified Meckel's cartilage connected anteriorly to the mandible (similar to Yanoconodon). e, Ossified Meckel's cartilage of Repenomamus (ventral view, isolated). f, Ossified Meckel's cartilage of Yanoconodon (ventral view, isolated, composite restoration of both the left and the right elements). g, Middle ear of Yanoconodon (composite restoration, ventral view): the ectotympanic and malleus are connected anteriorly to the mandible via ossified Meckel's cartilage; but these are mediolaterally separated from the posterior part of mandible, facilitated by curvature of the Meckel's cartilage (yellow). h, Middle ear bones of adult Ornithorhynchus (ventral view) and similarity to those of Yanoconodon. i, Embryonic Ornithorhynchus: the tympanic ring and the partially developed manubrium and goniale ('prearticular') of the malleus are anteriorly connected via Meckel's cartilage to the mandible, but separated mediolaterally from the posterior region of mandible, facilitated by the curved cartilage (red arrow). Yanoconodon retains the embryonic pattern of Ornithorhynchus owing to the timing change of earlier ossification of Meckel's cartilage, but otherwise its ectotympanic, malleus and incus are nearly the same as in adult Ornithorhynchus.
What we see here is that the three Mesozoic mammals all retain Meckel's cartilage as a slender, ossified splint clinging to the inner side of the jaw. In b and c, we can see that middle ear bones of both Yanoconodon and the platypus are remarkably similar, but there is one significant difference. In the platypus, those bones are not connected to the jaw at all—they have the standard mammalian middle ear, with the bones suspended remotely from other bones of the jaw and skull. In Yanoconodon, we are almost at that point. The middle ear bones are clearly delicate and specialized for function in hearing, but they retain one last tentative, delicate connection with the jaw through a contact with Meckel's cartilage. In this animal, we've caught the mammals just before they've taken that last step of fully separating the middle ear bones from the jaw.
This animal is from that time just before the hearing apparatus has let loose of its last bony mooring and said bon voyage to the jaw. It's a significant moment in history, I think.
Also look at g. This is a ventral view of the left jaw of Yanoconodon, and again you can see the middle ear bones connected by that tiny strut to the jaw. h is a drawing of the middle ear bones of the platypus in the same orientation, and i is especially neat: that's the jaw of a platypus embryo, before Meckel's cartilage is resorbed, and you can see that the middle ear bones are connected in the same way, transiently. It's one module in development that flaunts a lovely example of embryonic recapitulation of evolutionary history.
I said there were two novelties in this specimen. One is the beautiful connection between the middle ear bones and the jaw; the other is a curiosity in the number of vertebrae. Compare yourself to Yanoconodon, for instance:
| # vertebrae | ||
| Region | You | Yanaconodon |
| Cervical | 7, no ribs | 7, no ribs |
| Thoracic | 12, with ribs | 18, with ribs |
| Lumbar | 5, no ribs | 8, with floating ribs |
Not only is the total number of vertebrae very much on the high end of what we see in any modern mammals, making for a rather sinuous and flexible body, but there's that odd business of the lumbar (our lower back) vertebrae having riblike bones attached to them. The authors make the point, too, that the boundary between thoracic and lumbar in Yanoconodon is somewhat arbitrary—there's a continuous gradation rather than a sharp delineation. Gain and loss of lumbar ribs seems to be a fairly common event in these early mammalian clades, as illustrated below.
(click for larger image)
a, Homoplastic distribution of lumbar ribs in Mesozoic mammal taxa preserved with vertebral column: lumbar ribs are present in gobiconodontids and Yanoconodon but absent in closely related Jeholodens (node marked 2), present in Akidolestes but absent in closely related Zhangheotherium and the more inclusive theriiforms (node 1). b, Patterning of vertebral structure (development of lumbar ribs) in modern laboratory mice by homeobox genes. A separate loss of lumbar ribs in Jeholodens among eutriconodontans is hypothesized to be correlated with an independent activation of Hox10 patterning of thoracolumbar vertebrae (node 2). An isolated occurrence of lumbar ribs in Akidolestes among most spalacotheroids without lumbar ribs is hypothesized to be the effect of an independent loss of Hox10 gene function. The loss or gain of Hox gene function to pattern the vertebral identities is a plausible mechanism for homoplasy of lumbar ribs in early mammals, and for variation of thoracolumbar vertebral counts among eutriconodontans. tr, numbered thoracic ribs.
The inset diagram illustrates an experiment in mouse embryos: knocking out the three Hox10 genes in mice produces a transformation just like that seen in Yanoconodon, with all the lumbar vertebrae also producing small ribs. That's very cool, in that it suggests a molecular mechanism in that the evolution of the Hox10 genes was probably responsible for the morphological variation we see in Mesozoic fossils.
Luo Z-X, Chen P, Li G, Chen M (2007) A new eutriconodont mammal and evolutionary development in early mammals. Nature 446:288-293.
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That makes two new gaps in the fossil record.
Good thing God doesn't have to show your "pathetic" level of detail in explaining his creation. That would be a lot of work.
It is too bad we don't have good access to dinosaur DNA, since they seem to have a great deal of variability in numbers of different vertebrae and the relationship between verts and ribs.
Hooray science!
"That makes two new gaps in the fossil record."
HAHAhahahaa... sad, sad but true. We'll be hearing that one soon.
Interesting post PZ. It's unfortunate time travel really is impossible/extremely unlikely, it would be amazing to see these ancient critters in their habitat with their unfossilized peers who we may never learn about.
Would Yanocondon have been a monotreme?
As a layman I've been wondering about jaw/ear development for a while now. Are there hypothetical details about the mechanism behind the changes? Is it a series of variations in discrete steps, or something recursive in development, each generation passing on the "make the dental bone longer" instruction? Any indication when or if the changes have stopped, I guess, would be too subtle to measure in recent fauna. Is the structure optimal now, or is it still changing, would there be any advantage... head spinning.. need to sit down... :-)
Cool stuff. Thanks for sharing.
It must have had pack rat-like behaviour. It had a penny with it when it was buried in the sediment.
Oh, my god...and if you look closely at the penny, the date is 1999!
Evolution is destroyed!
Sigh. I love this stuff. You're right, he is a beautiful little beast. He's now up there with Tiktaalik roseae on my list of current faves. Thanks for this!
I also have a confession. I have some empathy for the folks who say, "This couldn't have happened by chance, it's too perfect, or too complex!" Sometimes that same thought flits across my mind, unbidden, when I contemplate spiders and webs, or hummingbirds, or metamorphosis, or the endlessly amazing variety of camouflages we see in nature. So I grab it by the tail before it gets away, plop it down in a chair, and say "Oh, yes it could have, and we have the mountains of evidence to support the theory of how and why, and just because you can't 'imagine' it doesn't mean it ain't so!"
The "problem" is that nature, all by itself, is awe-inspiring, sometimes in the extreme, and it's natural to just shake ones head in amazement and what the processes of life and time have wrought. It is difficult to see the process in perspective. Day-to-day life, for most of us, doesn't demand that we think about processes that span millions of years. But posts like these cast a lot of light on those processes. If the deniers would just look ...
At Greg Laden:
We do. Birds have been used as a good source of dinosaur DNA for years now.
Nope. Look at the tree: Tachyglossus is the echidna*, and Ornithorhynchus is the platypus**. These are the only two monotremes in the tree. Thus, Yanoconodon is more closely related to us*** than to the monotremes.
Which means that the "mammalian" middle ear evolved (at least) twice within mammals.
But we knew that already. It was shown two years ago**** that the oldest known monotreme, Teinolophos, retained the condition represented above by Morganucodon!
Reality is always stranger than fiction. :-)
* Originally called Echidna in Scientific, but then that name turned out to be preoccupied.
** Originally called Platypus in Scientific, but then... DAMN BEETLES!!! Sorry. Ornithorhynchus "bird beak" is a better name. :-)
*** The closest relative of us shown in the tree is Eomaia, one of the first eutherian mammals. Eutheria includes Placentalia and everything closer to it than to Marsupialia. The beastie next to it, Sinodelphys, is the oldest known metatherian -- Metatheria includes Marsupialia and everything closer to it than to Placentalia. :-) Together, Metatheria and Eutheria form Theria, which you'll need in the next footnote:
**** Thomas H. Rich, James A. Hopson, Anne M. Musser, Timothy F. Flannery & Patricia Vickers-Rich: Independent Origins of Middle Ear Bones in Monotremes and Therians, Science 307, 910 -- 914 (11 February 2005)
Uh, or were you maybe just asking if it laid eggs? That we don't know. But we don't have a reason to expect that only monotremes among mammals lay eggs, considering the vast extinct diversity between Monotremata and Theria (hinted at in the tree).
In mammals, abnormalities like ribs on the last neck vertebra have a strong correlation to early-onset cancer and malformations. This is thought to explain why mammals are so extremely conservative in regards of vertebra numbers.
Birds don't get cancer as easily as mammals. It's still mysterious why.
Stupid me! At least three times! Repenomamus is a triconodont like Yanoconodon (see tree), but has the "mammalian" condition.
Unless of course Y. represents a reversal. But I have a hard time imagining natural selection for this.
Kseniya, you're right of course. A lot of the problem for the creationists is that they just don't (or won't) grasp the immensity we're talking about in evolutionary science. All this talk of "The odds of that happening by chance" and "How could such big changes have arisen by natural processes?" show that these people are stuck thinking in terms of thousands, not millions, of years.
Now put it into perspective. If life is close to four billion years old but they insist it's only four thousand years old, their time frame is one million times too short. To put that into perspective, I'm a computer professional (on a good day) pushing 40. That works out to about 21 million minutes of my life. Now some character comes along and demands to know how I can possibly have amassed the coordination, language skills, education, and training to be as I am in only 21 minutes.
(Oops, I meant to say "immensity of time we're talking about".)
Argh! Silly me. I meant to end my post with a conclusion that because 21 minutes couldn't possibly be long enough for all that, that it must have been done by a supernatural being.
Obviously, its penny-hoarding behavior means that it is somehow related to the griffin, which was known to hoard gold in its nests. Poor things were just too little to win the fights for the good stuff and had to settle for loose change.
I can see the Fundies calling this one a fake. "If it was found in China, how come the darn thing doesn't have those slanty eyes?"
I've never understood the purpose or meaning of the phrase, "transitional fossils".
*All* fossils are transitional, since there is no "end product" to evolution (except for worldwide extinction, of course).
I've just read the article. Y. has ribs in the neck, and they're not even fused to the vertebrae (as they are e. g. in birds). Repenomamus has the same number of thoracics + lumbars.
The ear condition of Y. is argued to be a reversal, connected to other paedomorphic (childlike) features of the skeleton like the loss of separate epiphyses in all triconodonts. And Hadrocodium, a not-quite-mammal-under-the-strictest-definition, is said to have a "mammalian" middle ear. Curiouser and curiouser!
Thanks to Kseniya and Leon for highlighting the phenomena of awe that is such a common human reaction to the unexpected, the unknown, the numinous.
Kseniya said: "The "problem" is that nature, all by itself, is awe-inspiring, sometimes in the extreme, and it's natural to just shake ones head in amazement and what the processes of life and time have wrought. It is difficult to see the process in perspective".
As individuals, living lives that are vanishingly short compared to natural biological and geological processes, our world view is similarly brief. It is easy to imagine that the surprise and confusion experienced by perceiving something novel have been translated into stories of grand schemes carried out by powers far beyond our ken.
The trouble is that no two individuals or committees can agree on just what theses powers are and what relation with humanity they must, or aught, to have. Hence confusion, abusive authority and the growth of large cancerous lesions in the fabric of humanity.
"I've never understood the purpose or meaning of the phrase, "transitional fossils".
*All* fossils are transitional, since there is no "end product" to evolution (except for worldwide extinction, of course)."
Some fossils are more transitional than others.
nice post. thanks.
I appreciate you explaining this journal article PZ. This is a great service for those of us who don't usually read the scientific journals. Also thanks to the people posting the interesting comments. I always learn something new at this blog.
Thanks very much, PZ.
It's this kind of thing that drew me to the Scienceblogs world in the first place.
I enjoy everyone's rants against the forces of darkness, but, for me - the archetypical ignorant layman - these clear explanations of the wondrous organisation of nature are what it's really all about.
Kseniya, you hit the nail on the head with nature being awe-inspiring. Unfortunately, for many people they assume the next logical step to be there must be a God. Not because there is evidence for it, simply because, 'gosh, isn't this just amazing'. As Leon said, we just don't tend to think in terms of a scale of billions of years. What I don't understand is why someone who thinks that nature is too amazing to have happened without a God (it would be too amazing), has no problem believing in something that is much more amazing (a being that can manipulate nature at will).
Thank you, PZ. As always a clear and articulate summary of the latest work. Posts like this are, well... invaluable.
Again, thanks.
This is a fantastic post. I'll freely admit that I don't follow a lot of it, though-- all the names become mushy for me, sadly. I really need to bone up on my classification system. What would be a good online resource for someone wishing to do this-- something accurate, but maybe of a high school/early college level biology understanding?
I'd enjoy it to show EVERYTHING-- I've forgotten far too much, I can't even recall all the kingdoms properly. *sigh* Feel free to send me e-mail: I have a gmail account: malty1
I like the find, but I am not impressed with the find.
We already have far and enough in the form of "transitionals" dealing with these aspects of earlier synapsids to the mammalian condition. A few people said this was like "Tiktaalik". That just ain't so. When it comes to jaw-middle ear evolution of mammals, we have the smoking gun, the film to be seen at 11:00, as well as the bullet, motive, and a guy named "Fred" that happened to walk into the room at the time of the murder to deliver a pizza (pepperoni and anchovies). When it comes to elpistostegid-tetrapod evolution, we are still hauling in suspects and asking them what they were doing a few hundred million years ago in the mid-to-late Devonian, and if they knew a gal that went by the name of "Grace".
DaveX:
Have you taken a look at the Tree of Life project?
I just did... have things changed a lot? I don't remember ever hearing some of these groups at all... I'm feeling worse by the minute!
DaveX:
I once put together a page about scientific names of birds. It may help you to get a bit of feel for scientific names in general:
http://www.xs4all.nl/~sbpoley/scinames.htm
In the last 20 years? Yes. People started to do phylogenetics as a science instead of as an art. They discovered that having three cusps in a row on the molars is the normal state, so not everything with such teeth can be lumped into "Triconodonta", and that having three cusps in a triangle was just the next step, so not everything with such teeth can be lumped into "Symmetrodonta". And they figured out where the monotremes come from, thanks to bits and pieces from the southern hemisphere and China.
Then came discoveries of new fossils: we used to have a grand total of zero spalacotheroid (true symmetrodont) skeletons -- just jaw fragments and isolated teeth --, now we have complete skeletons (with hair) of three species. We used to have one true triconodont skeleton, now we have at least seven (most of them complete and with hair). We used to have half a docodont, now we have a whole one in addition (complete and with hair). We have the intriguing Fruitafossor (mentioned in the tree above) from the US Late Jurassic, a highly modified termite specialist (known from a largely complete skeleton). And then there's Hadrocodium, and a complete lower jaw of Haramiyavia (which belongs to a group known otherwise only from teeth), and so on...
And then I had a look at the Tree of Life site, and found that nothing of this business is up there. The tree shown is outdated, and even the nomenclature is wrong (palaeoryctoids are eutherians). Well, the Tree of Life accepts only the most qualified contributors, who are invariably those with the least spare time. *sigh*
The best site on the web about Mesozoic mammals is here.
I haven't mentioned Volaticotherium, the gliding mammal (complete skeleton with hair and flight membrane) with no known close relatives except maybe two or three isolated teeth...
Two new missing links?
Maybe the new response will be, rather, along the lines of:
So, you now admit that the evidence was not sufficient before, that you had to hunt for another so-called transitional. And probably the palenotologists are right now hunting for yet another, because this one isn't enough, either.
DaveX I recommend this web site put together by Berkeley. Particularly, go for the 'Evolution 101' link, as that has some info on the current classification system and how it is formed.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/home.php
I'm sure Trevor would be very pleased to receive any fictional award you might care to make up to go with that verbal accolade :-D - as long as any accompanying attention doesn't end up constituting a denial of service attack.
What for? If he wins in the lottery as many times per day as I do -- and chances are he wins twice as often --, he has no use for anything I can make up.
He could use it in his correspondance, along with his other fictional titles and qualifications.
Jaw dropping post!
Nope. Look at the tree: Tachyglossus is the echidna*, and Ornithorhynchus is the platypus**. These are the only two monotremes in the tree. Thus, Yanoconodon is more closely related to us*** than to the monotremes.
Which means that the "mammalian" middle ear evolved (at least) twice within mammals.
But we knew that already. It was shown two years ago**** that the oldest known monotreme, Teinolophos, retained the condition represented above by Morganucodon!
Reality is always stranger than fiction. :-)
* Originally called Echidna in Scientific, but then that name turned out to be preoccupied.
** Originally called Platypus in Scientific, but then... DAMN BEETLES!!! Sorry. Ornithorhynchus "bird beak" is a better name. :-)
*** The closest relative of us shown in the tree is Eomaia, one of the first eutherian mammals. Eutheria includes Placentalia and everything closer to it than to Marsupialia. The beastie next to it, Sinodelphys, is the oldest known metatherian -- Metatheria includes Marsupialia and everything closer to it than to Placentalia. :-) Together, Metatheria and Eutheria form Theria, which you'll need in the next footnote:
**** Thomas H. Rich, James A. Hopson, Anne M. Musser, Timothy F. Flannery & Patricia Vickers-Rich: Independent Origins of Middle Ear Bones in Monotremes and Therians, Science 307, 910 -- 914 (11 February 2005)
Uh, or were you maybe just asking if it laid eggs? That we don't know. But we don't have a reason to expect that only monotremes among mammals lay eggs, considering the vast extinct diversity between Monotremata and Theria (hinted at in the tree).
In mammals, abnormalities like ribs on the last neck vertebra have a strong correlation to early-onset cancer and malformations. This is thought to explain why mammals are so extremely conservative in regards of vertebra numbers.
Birds don't get cancer as easily as mammals. It's still mysterious why.
Stupid me! At least three times! Repenomamus is a triconodont like Yanoconodon (see tree), but has the "mammalian" condition.
Unless of course Y. represents a reversal. But I have a hard time imagining natural selection for this.
I've just read the article. Y. has ribs in the neck, and they're not even fused to the vertebrae (as they are e. g. in birds). Repenomamus has the same number of thoracics + lumbars.
The ear condition of Y. is argued to be a reversal, connected to other paedomorphic (childlike) features of the skeleton like the loss of separate epiphyses in all triconodonts. And Hadrocodium, a not-quite-mammal-under-the-strictest-definition, is said to have a "mammalian" middle ear. Curiouser and curiouser!
In the last 20 years? Yes. People started to do phylogenetics as a science instead of as an art. They discovered that having three cusps in a row on the molars is the normal state, so not everything with such teeth can be lumped into "Triconodonta", and that having three cusps in a triangle was just the next step, so not everything with such teeth can be lumped into "Symmetrodonta". And they figured out where the monotremes come from, thanks to bits and pieces from the southern hemisphere and China.
Then came discoveries of new fossils: we used to have a grand total of zero spalacotheroid (true symmetrodont) skeletons -- just jaw fragments and isolated teeth --, now we have complete skeletons (with hair) of three species. We used to have one true triconodont skeleton, now we have at least seven (most of them complete and with hair). We used to have half a docodont, now we have a whole one in addition (complete and with hair). We have the intriguing Fruitafossor (mentioned in the tree above) from the US Late Jurassic, a highly modified termite specialist (known from a largely complete skeleton). And then there's Hadrocodium, and a complete lower jaw of Haramiyavia (which belongs to a group known otherwise only from teeth), and so on...
And then I had a look at the Tree of Life site, and found that nothing of this business is up there. The tree shown is outdated, and even the nomenclature is wrong (palaeoryctoids are eutherians). Well, the Tree of Life accepts only the most qualified contributors, who are invariably those with the least spare time. *sigh*
The best site on the web about Mesozoic mammals is here.
I haven't mentioned Volaticotherium, the gliding mammal (complete skeleton with hair and flight membrane) with no known close relatives except maybe two or three isolated teeth...
What for? If he wins in the lottery as many times per day as I do -- and chances are he wins twice as often --, he has no use for anything I can make up.
Nice article! I agree with all. Thanks for sharing the helpful information.
Thnks fr tkng ths. Gd blg pst n yr st. I ws chckng yr mssg nd I hv bkmrk yr blg dn.
[remove the comment registration requirement, and time to first spam? Two minutes. --pzm]