Discovery of old spines mammal 127 million years – TF1

Scientists have discovered a new mammal. With hair and thorns, it was the size of a rat and burrowing legs like those of armadillos. The fossil was also studied distressed ringworm, fungal infection that affects the coat and exists even today, the researchers found. Called Spinolestes xenarthrosus, this fossil, perfectly preserved, was found in 2011 in Las Hoyas, a bearing Lower Cretaceous (-127 000 000 years) located in Spain near the city of Cuenca.
This “fur ball and peak” has been described by an international team of paleontologists, in a study published Wednesday in the British journal Nature. They concluded that it was a new species belonging to the order of eutriconodonta , a line of extinct mammals at the end of the Mesozoic era (-252.2 to – 66 , 0 million years).
25 cm to 50 grams

Spinolestes xenarthrosus, which fed on insects and larvae, weighed between 50 and 70 grams and measured 25 cm long. He had sharp teeth, spine, legs able to search the ground like those of armadillos, a mane along the back and small spines similar to those of the hedgehog. If this animal had the classic characteristics of his family, as his fur, the presence of very specific spines “makes it unique,” the French CNRS (National Scientific Research Centre), a researcher at the University of Rennes, Romain Vullo, participated in the study. “His evolution took place regardless of species such as spiny hedgehogs”.
An important discovery in science

The fossil still has bronchioles lung and liver remains. “This is the oldest internal organs of mammals ever found,” said Thomas Martin, a researcher at the University of Bonn, one of the study authors.
The researchers defined the location of the diaphragm of the animal, “a first fossil evidence that the single respiratory system in mammals was much functional from the Mesozoic,” notes the CNRS. With this fossil, “we have conclusive evidence that several fundamental characteristics of mammals were already well established there 125 million years, to the time of dinosaurs,” said Zhe-Xi Luo, a researcher at the University of Chicago, one of the authors of the study.
Las Hoyas, unique in Europe, is a sedimentary deposit containing a great variety of fossils, trapped in an ancient marshy environment.