Ancestor of All Placental Mammals Revealed - Slashdot43010287story Posted by samzenpus from the back-in-the-day dept. sciencehabit writes "The ancestor of all placental mammals?the diverse lineage that includes almost all species of mammals living today, including humans?was a tiny, furry-tailed creature that evolved shortly after the dinosaurs disappeared, a new study suggests. The hypothetical creature, not found in the fossil record but inferred from it, probably was a tree-climbing, insect-eating mammal that weighed between 6 and 245 grams?somewhere between a small shrew and a mid-sized rat. It was furry, had a long tail, gave birth to a single young, and had a complex brain with a large lobe for interpreting smells and a corpus callosum, the bundle of nerve fibers that connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain. The period following the dinosaur die-offs could be considered a 'big bang' of mammalian diversification, with species representing as many as 10 major groups of placentals appearing within a 200,000-year interval."
A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows. -- O'Henry
Posted by samzenpus 
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