SCIENTIST FIND ANCIENT MAMMAL

SCIENTIST FIND ANCIENT MAMMAL ‘STEPPING STONE’ 

Chilean and Argentine researchers have unearthed teeth in Patagonia belonging to a mammal that lived 74 million years ago, the oldest such remains yet discovered in the South American country, the Chilean

Belonged to a species called Magallanodon baikashkenke,on a dig near Torres del Paine National Park, a remote area of Patagonia famous for its glcacier – capped Andean spires and frigid ocean waters

Small mammal would have lived in southern Patagonia during the late Cretaceous era, alongside dinosaurs, crocodiles, turtles and birds

It is the southernmost record of Gondwanatheria, a group of long-extinct early mammals that co-existed with dinosaurs

Gondwanatheria remains from the Cretaceous era are extremely rare, particularly in this part of southern South America, according to the Chilean Antarctic Institute

Magallanodon: A genus of mammals from the extinct group Gondwanatheria

It contains a single species, Magallanodon baikashkenke

First Mesozoic mammal known from Chile, and is Late Cretaceous in age

Known from individual teeth found in a quarry in the Río de Las Chinas Valley located in the Magallanes Basin in Chilean Patagonia

Fossils come from the Dorotea Formation, which is Late Campanian to Early Maastrichtian in age.