Artistic reconstruction of HaramiyaviaUNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, A.I. NEANDER
In the grand scheme of geologic time, plus or minus a million years isn’t all that much. But new research suggests that the diversification of mammals occurred a full 30 million years later than previously thought, placing the rise the mammalian class in the Jurassic and not the Triassic period. The results were published today (November 16) in PNAS.
A team of researchers working in Greenland in 1995 found the tiny, well-preserved jaw of Haramiyavia clemmenseni, a mouse-like proto mammal. Scientists including Neil Shubin, a professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, spent the next two years examining the specimen with the best technology available at the time—a needle and pin vice under a microscope. “Somebody sat for two years preparing ...
