Science and Technology Daily, Beijing, August 19 (intern reporter Zhang Jiaxin) According to a paper published in the Journal of Systems Paleontology on the 18th, American scientists have discovered three new ancient mammals.
The newly discovered creatures are named Miniconus jeanninae, Conacodon hettingeri and Beornus honi
These three new species belong to ancient ungulates and are the original ancestors of today's ungulate mammals (such as horses, elephants, cattle, and hippos)
The major event that led to the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago is widely regarded as the beginning of the "mammal age" because several mammals have appeared for the first time since then
The lead author of the paper, Madeleine Atberg, Department of Geological Sciences, University of Colorado, explained: "When the dinosaurs became extinct, the contact with different foods and environments made the tooth structure of mammals diversified, enabling rapid reproduction and progress.
In order to determine the anatomical differences between ancient ungulates, the researchers studied the teeth and mandibles of 29 fossil species of this type, and learned about the differences between these species and other ancient ungulates in the early Paleocene in the western United States.
Beornus honi is the largest, about the size of a prairie dog or domestic cat; Conacodon hettingeri is similar to other species of Conacodon, but the shape of its last molar is different; and Miniconus jeanninae is different in size from other small, ancient and new The ancient ungulates of the early epoch are similar, but the difference is that their molars have a small tip
Atberg said: "Previous studies have shown that in the first hundreds of thousands of years after the extinction of the dinosaurs, the mammalian species diversity of inland western North America was relatively low, but the discovery of three new species in the Great Divide Basin showed that After the extinction of the dinosaurs, the species quickly diversified
Researchers say that the diversity of mammals in the early Paleocene has not yet been fully determined, and more new species are expected to be discovered
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