Volaticotherium

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Volaticotherium
Volaticotherium.jpg

Volaticotherium

Temporal occurrence
Oxfordium ?
Lower Cretaceous
approx. 158 or 130 million years
Locations
Systematics
Amniotes (Amniota)
Synapsids (Synapsida)
Mammals (mammalia)
Eutriconodonta
Triconodontidae
Volaticotherium
Scientific name
Volaticotherium
Meng , Hu , Wang , Wang & Li , 2006
Art
  • Volaticotherium antiquum ; Meng et al., 2006

Volaticotherium antiquum is thanks to its wing membranes to glide UNTRAINED, small mammal from the Mesozoic . The fossil was first scientifically described in December 2006 and was dated to be around 130 million years old. Previously, gliding mammals were only known from geological layers at least 70 million years younger. The fossil shows that mammals opened up the air space for themselves at the same time as the feathered dinosaurs .

The name of the fossil is made up of Latin volaticus (“winged, flying”), Greek θερίον “therion” (“hairy animal”) and Latin antiquus (“ancient”). It was excavated in the Daohugou layers in the northeast of the People's Republic of China in Inner Mongolia near Daohugou ( Ningcheng County , part of Chifeng City ), under a rock layer, the age of which was dated to 125 million years. This represents a minimum age for Volaticotherium , but meanwhile an age of about 158 ​​Ma BP ( Oxfordium ) is also being considered.

The animal was according to the first description about 120-140 mm long and weighed about 70 grams; its size thus roughly corresponded to the American dwarf sliding squirrel ( Assapan ) Glaucomys volans . The shape of its foot bones indicates a tree-dwelling way of life, similar to the flying squirrels living today . Due to other anatomical features, according to the first publication, it must be assumed that the animal was an agile glider due to its low weight and the relatively large flight membranes, but could probably not capture any flying insects while gliding; the dentition suggests that insects are the most important food.

Due to its special anatomical features, the fossil was not only given a new generic and species name. Rather, it was assigned to the new mammalian order Volaticotheria as the only species to date and in this the new family Volaticotheriidae.

The discoverer and first describer of the fossil, Jin Meng ( Chinese  孟津 , Pinyin Mèng Jīn ), comes from the People's Republic of China and had completed his academic training in paleontology in Beijing in the 1980s, but then went to the USA and in New York worked as a curator at the American Museum of Natural History . With his Beijing training center, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences , he continued to be in regular contact, so that in March 2006, unprocessed fossil finds were left to him for investigation. One of these finds with the code number IVPP V 14739 had been assigned to the Triconodonta as an uninteresting specimen after superficial examination , but Meng recognized its dentition as atypical. During a closer analysis of the fossil under the microscope, he also discovered the outlines of a skin membrane that was thickly covered with hair and that could be stretched on both sides of the body between all four legs and the base of the long tail as soon as the animal had its legs to the side of the body stretched away. After six months of preparation and research in databases, it was clear that the fossil did not belong to any previously known species, not even to a previously known mammal order.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. on the decision of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature , the initially chosen name V. antiquus was changed to V. antiquum in early 2007 . Corrigendum in: Nature 446, March 1, 2007, p. 102
  2. ^ Jin Meng et al .: A Mesozoic gliding mammal from northeastern China. In: Nature. Volume 444, No. 7121, 2006, pp. 889-893, doi: 10.1038 / nature05234