#Haramiyida

[alphynix]

Month of Mesozoic Mammals #16: So Many Gliders Maiopatagium

The haramiyidan featured yesterday was a ground-dwelling animal, but most others in the group were actually highly adapted for tree-climbing. They were very squirrel-like in appearance, with grasping hands and feet and tails that may have been prehensile -- and some took this lifestyle even further, becoming specialized gliders.

Living during the Late Jurassic of China (157-163 mya), Maiopatagium is one of at least four known gliding haramiyidans. It was about 25cm long (10″), around half of which was its long tail, and had a gliding membrane extending between its wrists and ankles. The proportions of its hands and feet were very similar to modern colugos and the feet of bats, which has been interpreted as evidence of the same sort of upside-down roosting behavior.

Its close relative Vilevolodon had rodent-like teeth highly adapted for crushing and grinding, suggesting these haramiyidans were herbivores feeding mainly on seeds and soft plant matter.

And these gliding haramiyidans also contribute to the confusing classification of haramiyidans -- because although Megaconus’ anatomy suggested they might be mammaliaformes, studies of another glider, Arboroharamiya, give a very different result. Its ear bones and jaw show the characteristics of true members of Mammalia, supporting the hypothesis that haramiyidans were actually close relatives (or ancestral to) the multituberculates.

[galswintha]

The earliest-known mammaliaform fossil from Greenland sheds light on origin of mammals | PNAS

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/10/07/2012437117

This study shows a comprehensive analysis of an early mammaliaform dentary, which combines data from comparative anatomy, CT scanning, and FEA. The new fossil fills an important gap in our understanding of mammaliaform evolution showing a transitional stage between triconodont-like molariform pattern of morganucodontids and multicusped pattern of haramiyidans.

[synapsidgirl]

I had a bit of free time yesterday, and added Xianshou to the other gliding haramiyids. There are two species of Xianshou: X. linglong I chose for this painting, and a smaller X. songae, that was about half the size of its bigger relative. I must say, I’m much happier with the layout now.

Both species of Xianshou were described in 2014.

[synapsid-taxonomy]

Wait, I'm out of the loop. Multis are no longer mammals? Does that mean they're the only non-mammal cynodonts to make it to the Cenozoic?

Don’t worry, multituberculates are still mammals. But haramiyidans probably aren’t, and there’s a chance gondwanatheres aren’t either (one study recovered them as within Haramiyida), leaving multituberculates as the only major group of “allotheres” left in Mammalia.

[earthstory]

New mammal fossils reveal our hairy roots.

We usually associate mammals with the era since the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous, when they spread into the vacant ecological niches left behind by the demise of the dinosaurs. Truth is, they appeared a long time before they conquered the world, as far back as the late Triassic 212 million years ago when our distant ancestors the Mammaliaforms walked the world. They co-existed with the dinosaurs throughout most of their reign, the first saurians being about 30 million years older. Two new Jurassic fossils from China have sparked a debate on what makes a true mammal, and one had the oldest fossilised fur. They were published in this week's Nature. Both fossils are the most complete examples found of an order called Haramiyidae, until now only known from their teeth. It always seems like serendipity when two examples of something long sought after appear at the same time from different localities. Finding their exact location on the tree of life is proving problematic, and a debate has started on exactly how close to true mammals they are.

The first, illustrated in the picture, was squirrel sized, and had fur and a keratinous spur on his hind leg. The latter is remarkably similar to that of the male duck billed platypus, an egg laying primitive mammal found in Australia. The platypus's spur is poisonous, and the fossil example may well have been similar. It was found in a 165 million year old layer of volcanic ash that settled in a freshwater lake in Inner Mongolia.

Megaconus mammaliaformis's skeleton shows both reptilian and mammalian features, that lie on the hazy borderline between proto and true mammals, but proves that fur was already in existence back in the mid Jurassic. Its teeth reveal an omnivorous diet, showing it already had the mammalian opportunistic trait of trying to squeeze a living out of everything that can be nibbled. It lived by the lake shore and probably foraged at night, since he shared his habitat with Pterosaurs.

The second find, named Arboroharamiya, comes from northeastern China, and died about 160 million years ago. It had long digits, and possibly a prehensile tail, suggesting that it lived in trees. Its jaw consists of one bone, which is a mammalian trait, as reptiles have three further jaw bones that metamorphosed into our ear bones. The team controversially claim that it is a true mammal, and suggest that they were in existence as long ago as 200 million years.

One specimen is not enough to make such a definite statement, and the search is on for further finds to help us draw the line between 'proto' and 'true' mammals. More fossils are needed from this distant era before further clarity can be attained.

Loz Image credit: University of Chicago, Nature. http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/aug/07/jurassic-squirrel-mammals-evolution-earth http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/discovery-of-165-million-year-old-fossil-sheds-light-on-evolution-of-earliest-mammals/ http://www.nature.com/news/fossils-throw-mammalian-family-tree-into-disarray-1.13522 http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/otherprehistoriclife/a/earlymammals.htm Pay wall access, original paper: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v500/n7461/full/nature12429.html

[wikipress01]

Tiny fossil skull found in Utah yields big changes in paleontology

An illustration exhibits the small mammal, Cifelliodon wahkarmoosuch, as it might have appeared because it lived in what’s now Utah 130 million years in the past.(Photo: Submitted)

The 130-million-year-old skull of a tiny mammal, found amid a set of dinosaur bones after a St. George paleontologist got here throughout a cache of fossils greater than a decade in the past, may reshape the best way scientists take into consideration the breakup of Earth’s historical super-continent, Pangea, and about the best way mammals unfold internationally.

The skull, found almost full, represents a brand new species, dubbed Cifelliodon wahkarmoosuch; the latter half interprets to “Yellow Cat” in the ancestral language of the Ute tribe. And whereas it was found in an uncovered rock formation on Bureau of Land Management land northeast of Arches National Park, it has some unlikely kinfolk — a subgroup of creatures often known as Hanodontidae, which had beforehand solely been found in areas of North Africa.

CT scanning of a 130-million-year-old fossil allowed scientists to find out the mind construction of a brand new species of mammal that’s reshaping the best way scientists take into consideration Earth’s historical super-continent Pangea and the best way mammals and their kinfolk dispersed themselves among the many continents. (Photo: Utah Geological Survey)

In a paper revealed this month in the scientific journal Nature, lead creator Adam Huttenlocker, a paleontologist and assistant professor on the University of Southern California, suggests the invention implies that Pangea broke up into smaller continents about 15 million years later than beforehand thought. And that might reshape the best way scientists take into consideration the early migrations of mammals and their shut kinfolk between Asia, Europe, North America and the southern continents.

“For a long time, we thought early mammals from the Cretaceous (145 to 66 million years ago) were anatomically similar and not ecologically diverse,” Huttenlocker mentioned in a written assertion. “This finding by our team and others reinforce that, even before the rise of modern mammals, ancient relatives of mammals were exploring specialty niches: insectivores, herbivores, carnivores, swimmers, gliders. Basically, they were occupying a variety of niches that we see them occupy today.”

Introducing a brand new species

Paleontologists working with the Utah Geological Survey pose with two excavated blocks found in japanese Utah which have to date yielded fossils from 5 totally different animals. (Photo: Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm)

The skull, now on show on the Natural History Museum of Utah, was found amid a cache of dinosaur fossils uncovered by paleontologists with the Utah Geological Survey.

Its make-up, mixed with current information of its kinfolk, signifies Cifelliodon would have been about six inches lengthy and weighed about 2.four kilos, coated with fur and with a shallow snout and downturned face. It would have suckled its younger like fashionable mammalia, however laid eggs just like the platypus and echidna.

Its broad molars counsel a weight loss program of leafy vegetation, and a reconstruction of its mind utilizing CT scans of the skull counsel it had giant olfactory bulbs and would have had a wonderful sense of scent. This additionally means it was seemingly nocturnal.

It is the primary mammal skull found in Utah’s Cretaceous-period rocks, and comes from a bunch of primitive mammal kinfolk often known as the Haramiyida, which had beforehand not been found in both the Cretaceous or North America.

It is notably youthful than associated Jurassic-era mammals found in Eurasia and North Africa.

The fossil, with its European ties, provides an essential level of collaboration with newly found European dinosaur teams from the identical sorts of rock, indicating they have been left at a time when the Atlantic Ocean had not totally opened.

A loaded discovery

Laboratory work is completed on a block pulled from a dig web site in japanese Utah that yielded the fossils of dinosaurs and a small mammal. (Photo: Utah Geological Survey)

The fossil represents the most recent science to return out of Utah’s Cedar Mountain Formation, an Emery County geologic surprise offering troves of recent info to paleontology.

It was found virtually by chance inside a lab whereas scientists have been working to extract the dinosaur bones that surrounded it.

The assortment, taken from a web site found by Andrew Milner, the paleontologist and curator on the Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm in St. George, has to date yielded fossils from 5 creatures, together with three dinosaurs and a crocodilian that’s nonetheless being researched.

Milner mentioned he initially noticed dinosaur bones on the web site when he was first there in 2004, however when he returned later they have been gone, apparently eliminated illegally.

Luckily, he had confirmed the location to James Kirkland, the state paleontologist with the Utah Geological Survey.

“(Kirkland) came back with a couple of geologists to talk about the formations there, just the geology, and he happened to be standing on that exact site and found bones weathering out all over the place,” Milner mentioned.

Two giant blocks of rock have been taken to a laboratory, the place fossils from two giant iguanodontian dinosaurs have been studied. Beneath the foot of one among them was the Cifelliodon skull.

Kirkland mentioned the location has yielded essential discoveries already, however may seemingly produce extra as work continues on the opposite fossils.

“The same geology that gave us Arches National Park gave us this basin that totally surrounds Arches, that loops all the way around it, and that gives us all these dinosaurs,” he mentioned.

“We’ve been finding dinosaur on top of dinosaur,” he added.

Follow David DeMille on Twitter, @SpectrumDeMille.

Cifelliodon wahkarmoosuch

The identify of the brand new mammalian species means “Cifelli’s tooth of the Yellow Cat,” honoring Oklahoma paleontologist Richard Cifelli for his contributions to the Cretaceous mammal analysis in Utah and the American West, and utilizing the Ute tribal phrases for yellow, “wahkar,” and for cat, “moosuch.”

Read or Share this story: https://www.thespectrum.com/story/news/2018/05/29/tiny-fossil-skull-found-utah-yields-big-changes-paleontology/653798002/

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from http://www.wikipress.co.uk/science/tiny-fossil-skull-found-in-utah-yields-big-changes-in-paleontology/

[dendroica]

New proto-mammal fossil sheds light on evolution of earliest mammals

A newly discovered fossil reveals the evolutionary adaptations of a 165-million-year-old proto-mammal, providing evidence that traits such as hair and fur originated well before the rise of the first true mammals. The biological features of this ancient mammalian relative, named Megaconus mammaliaformis, are described by scientists from the University of Chicago in the Aug 8 issue of Nature....

Discovered in Inner Mongolia, China, Megaconus is one of the best-preserved fossils of the mammaliaform groups, which are long-extinct relatives to modern mammals. Dated to be around 165 million years old, Megaconus co-existed with feathered dinosaurs in the Jurassic era, nearly 100 million years before Tyrannosaurus rex roamed Earth.

Preserved in the fossil is a clear halo of guard hairs and underfur residue, making Megaconus only the second known pre-mammalian fossil with fur. It was found with sparse hairs around its abdomen, leading the team to hypothesize that it had a naked abdomen. On its heel, Megaconus possessed a long keratinous spur, which was possibly poisonous. Similar to spurs found on modern egg-laying mammals, such as male platypuses, the spur is evidence that this fossil was most likely a male member of its species....

A terrestrial animal about the size of a large ground squirrel, Megaconus was likely an omnivore, possessing clearly mammalian dental features and jaw hinge. Its molars had elaborate rows of cusps for chewing on plants, and some of its anterior teeth possessed large cusps that allowed it to eat insects and worms, perhaps even other small vertebrates. It had teeth with high crowns and fused roots similar to more modern, but unrelated, mammalian species such as rodents. Its high-crowned teeth also appeared to be slow growing like modern placental mammals. The skeleton of Megaconus, especially its hind-leg bones and finger claws, likely gave it a gait similar to modern armadillos, a previously unknown type of locomotion in mammaliaforms.

Luo and his team identified clearly non-mammalian characteristics as well. Its primitive middle ear, still attached to the jaw, was reptile-like. Its anklebones and vertebral column are also similar to the anatomy of previously known mammal-like reptiles. "We cannot say that Megaconus is our direct ancestor, but it certainly looks like a great-great-grand uncle 165 million years removed. These features are evidence of what our mammalian ancestor looked like during the Triassic-Jurassic transition," Luo said.

"Megaconus shows that many adaptations found in modern mammals were already tried by our distant, extinct relatives. In a sense, the three big branches of modern mammals are all accidental survivors among many other mammaliaform lineages that perished in extinction," Luo added.

The fossil, now in the collections in Paleontological Museum of Liaoning in China, was discovered and studied by an international team of paleontologists from Paleontological Museum of Liaoning, University of Bonn in Germany, and the University of Chicago.

[alphynix]

@thesumlax replied to your photo: Month of Mesozoic Mammals #16: So Many Gliders...

Has anybody ever checked if haramiyidans are even a natural group and not just some polyphyletic mess?

This paper found them to be potentially polyphyletic, with Megaconus placed in the mammaliaformes but other ‘haramiyidans’ grouped with the multituberculates as a new clade Euharamiyida.

It’s a huge taxonomic mess.

[synapsidgirl]

So here are the newly described Maiopatagium and Vilevolodon. You know, those gliders everyone is talking about lately. Depending on where you place haramiyids*, they can be the first non-mammalian synapsids with gliding adaptations we found. And there’s also third gliding haramiyid, Xianshou, but I haven’t yet gotten my mitts on any reference material on it, so it’s missing from the picture. I’ll try to add it at some point to those two. It’d help the composition, at least.

And I’m sorry, but I’m too discouraged, and feel like someone hit me over the head with a baseball bat, to write anything longer, or even useful, about those two.

*haramiyids are either mammaliaformes, or crown group mammals related to multituberculates.

[wikipress01]

Paleontologists discover new mammal fossil in southern Utah

Mammal composite of newly found fossil. (Photo: St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm)

(KUTV) – Cifelliodon wahkarmoosuch is the primary mammal cranium to be found in Utah’s Cretaceous rocks.

Andrew Milner, a curator and paleontologist for the St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site at Johnson Farm discovered the fossil in Lower Cretaceous rock on the Bureau of Land Management’s land northeast of Arches National Park.

This mammal comes from an extinct group of primitive mammal relations often called the Haramiyida. It’s believed that it stood about 6 inches tall and weighed about 2.four kilos. It additionally had buck enamel, a shallow snout and broad molars, which recommend its eating regimen consisted of leafy and fleshy vegetation. The cifelliodon could have additionally been nocturnal.

Scientists had been capable of reconstruct the type of its primitive mind utilizing CT scans to point that the mammal had a superb sense of odor.

The fossil has additionally helped scientists perceive what life was like on Pangea, over 150 million years in the past. With some ties to different dinosaur species found in Europe, the invention of the cifelliodon exhibits that the Atlantic was not totally open. Animals might walk–or a minimum of island hop–between Utah and Europe and even North Africa early in the Cretaceous.

Source hyperlink from http://www.wikipress.co.uk/science/paleontologists-discover-new-mammal-fossil-in-southern-utah/

[alphynix]

@maureenlycaon​ reblogged your photo: Month of Mesozoic Mammals #15: What Even Are They...

Whaat? I thought the haramiyids were finally shown to be mammals, related to the multis.

I’ll be addressing the multi side of the argument tomorrow.

But what haramiyidans get classified as really depends on the study and which species and anatomical characters were included in the phylogenetic analyses. For example Megaconus was recovered as a mammaliaform in the paper that described it -- while the description of Arboroharamiya in the very same issue of Nature came to the opposite conclusion.

There’s a recently-published study of Arboroharamiya’s ear bones that found the multi hypothesis to be more likely, but things are probably far from actually being settled.