‘Oh, my God, this is amazing’

Pittsburgh scientists on team that discovered new mammal of long ago

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

It wasn’t just dinosaurs that populated the Earth 126 million years ago — there were a few known placental mammals, too. And now, there’s one more: A team of international scientists — including two from the Pittsburgh area — announced Wednesday that they have discovered a fourth placental mammal from that time period. The well-preserved new mammal, an ancient furry creature most similar to a modern tree shrew, is named

A research paper introducing the species, which was discovered in a quarry in China’s Inner Mongolia, was published online Wednesday afternoon in the journal Nature.

John Wible, curator of mammals at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, became involved in the project about two years ago. “As soon as I saw the photographs of the fossil, I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is amazing,’” he said. “It was amazingly complete. Right off the bat, I saw there were skeletal parts of the body that were not known of other animals of that time period.”

Placental mammals, which include humans, are one of three types of mammals. The others are marsupials, such as kangaroos, and egg- laying monotremes, such as the duckbill platypus.

had fur visible on the fossil, ate insects such as cicadas and stood roughly 10 inches.

“Because this animal is so complete, it affords an amazing window on the early evolution and lifestyle of the mammal group that would become dominant after the demise of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago,” Shundong Bi, a biology professor at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and lead author of the study, said in a news release. He was in China Wednesday and could not be reached for comment.

The fossil was not allowed to leave China, said Mr. Wible, noting that this is the first paper he has published where he’s been unable to actually hold the fossil, though he hopes to see it in person in the next few years. Instead, he relied on detailed photographs and scanned images.

Mr. Wible concentrated his research on some of the less- studied mammal bones, which were well-preserved in the specimen. Those include the complete anatomy of the hyoid apparatus in the neck and the ectotympanic bone in the skull. The hyoid in an

is similar to that of a modern squirrel, while the ectotympanic bone is a “dead ringer” for that of a South American opossum.

“You’ve got 126 million years of time where things could be evolving,” he said, “and this didn’t change very much.”