科研之友
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摘要
Placentals are the most abundant mammals that have diversified into every niche for vertebrates and dominated the world's terrestrial biotas in the Cenozoic. A critical event in mammalian history is the divergence of eutherians, the clade inclusive of all living placentals, from the metatherian-marsupial clade(1-8). Here we report the discovery of a new eutherian of 160 Myr from the Jurassic of China, which extends the first appearance of the eutherian-placental clade by about 35 Myr from the previous record, reducing and resolving a discrepancy between the previous fossil record and the molecular estimate for the placental-marsupial divergence(9-13). This mammal has scansorial forelimb features, and provides the ancestral condition for dental and other anatomical features of eutherians.
- 出版日期2011-8-25
- 单位北京自然博物馆; 中国地质科学院
