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Paleontologists have discovered a cat-sized mammal that roamed overland with dinosaurs towards the end of the Cretaceous period. The 66 million-year-old fossils were found in Madagascar, and the team has published their research on this “crazy beast” in the journal Nature.
Researchers have named this peculiar mammal, Adalatherium hui. They explained in their article to The conversation that Adalatherium is a combination of Malagasy and Greek words, “Adàla” and “therium”, which means “crazy beast”.
Why is this prehistoric mammal known as the ‘crazy beast’?
Well, the researchers found many strange features aside from the relatively large size it boasted, compared to other mammals of its time. Most of the mammals that existed along with the dinosaurs were the size of a mouse, while Adalatherium, at about 3 kilos, was the size of a cat.
The most peculiar thing about Adalatherium is that it had more holes (holes) in the face than any known mammal. These acted as passageways for nerves and blood vessels to reach an extremely sensitive snout covered with whiskers. It even had a large hole in its snout and strange ear bones that had never before been seen in an extinct or existing mammal.
Furthermore, the Adalatherium had more vertebrae than other mammals at the time. It moved with the help of unusually arched and dug leg bones with large claws. The researchers think it had muscular hind legs, while the front legs were closer to current mammals that can run fast. According to researcher Simone Hoffmann of the New York Institute of Technology, this makes it difficult to discover how Adalatherium walked, since “its front is telling us a different story than its rear.”
But the strange anatomical features, never seen before, don’t end here. Adalatherium had front teeth like mice, but along the rear teeth around each jaw, it had diamond-shaped ridges that intertwined with each other. This is a completely different type of dental pattern, as one of the researchers Alistair Evans from Monash University explains: “The strangeness of the animal is clearly evident in the teeth: they are upside down compared to all other mammals and must have evolved again from a remote ancestor. “
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Why is Adalatherium so strange?
For starters, the mammal is part of a group known as Gondwanatherians named after the Gondwana supercontinent which consisted of Australia, Africa, Madagascar, South America, and India. This fossil of Adalatherium hui is the most complete skeleton of a Gondwanatherian from the Cretaceous period. The researchers think that the Gondwanatherians represent mammalian evolution experiments.
The researchers in their article on The conversation He explained that Adalatherium is very different due to the Island effect. It evolved at a time when Madagascar had separated from the main continent. Being isolated on an island can lead to strange evolutionary patterns in which small animals could become large, and vice versa.
Research leader David Krause of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science and professor emeritus at Stony Brook University explains that most of the pieces are missing: “Adalatherium is just one piece, but an important piece, in a big puzzle on the first mammals evolution in the southern hemisphere “.
Damn, who would think such a cute little badger-faced mammal is known as a ‘mad beast’ and plays such an important role in paleontology.
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Image Source: Denver Museum of Nature and Science
