oldest ancestor

A team of paleontologists has discovered the oldest known mammal ancestor in a pile of fossilized bones on Mallorca, a Spanish island in the Mediterranean. This animal belongs to a group of saber-toothed predators that lived on Earth even before the emergence of modern mammals (Gorgonopsis), about 280 million years ago. The team’s discovery, published in the journal Nature Communications, pushes back the chronology and geography of some of the earliest ancestors of mammals, Channel 24 writes.

Most people associate the emergence of mammals with the extinction of dinosaurs approximately 66 million years ago. When the asteroid Chicxulub wiped out approximately 75% of Earth’s species, including all dinosaurs except the ancestors of birds, the survivors were mostly the fast mammals that inherited the planet. But actually Mammal life began much earlierFundamental evolutionary divisions that gave rise to vertebrates, their unique cranial spans, and other differences that distinguish their branches on the tree of life.

This example at least 270 million years agoThis makes it the oldest Gorgonopsis known today. Dinosaurs did not appear until 25 million years later, and it was not until the Triassic that they became masters of the planet, following the devastating mass extinction that marked the end of the Permian period.

The ruins are fragmentary; It consists of several vertebrae, ribs, a leg bone, and parts of the animal’s skull. Therefore, the team was unable to identify the animal more precisely than the “subsequence” level. So the more precise family or species is unknown.

Gorgonopsias were tetrapods; They were part of a group of synapsids known as quadrupedal vertebrates, more specifically the therapsids.

There is a large time gap in the therapsid fossil record between when they are thought to have evolved, based on our knowledge of synapsid relationships, and when they actually appear in the fossil record. The new sample helps fill some of that gap. Our finding is particularly important for two reasons: First, it is the first Gorgonopsis found at low latitudes.
– said paleontologist Josep Fortuny from the Miquel Crusafont Catalan Institute of Paleontology in Spain.

All previously known gorgonopsis were located either far north or far south, primarily in South Africa. They lived at a time when all continents were part of the supercontinent Pangea, with Majorca located closer to the center of the landmass.

Secondly, and more importantly, it is the oldest in the world. Thus, the discovery of the oldest Gorgonopsis in the Mediterranean region points to the equatorial origin of this group of animals.
– added Fortuni.

The fossil was found in an ancient floodplain in the center of Pangea, where the ancestors of mammals and other animals came to drink water.

Mammals are the only synapsids that have survived to this day. The team’s latest study shows how early four-legged vertebrates evolved. This also raises the question of where exactly our ancestors first appeared on Earth’s supercontinent at the time, and what environmental conditions led to this. Specimens like Gorgonopsis shed light on fundamental questions about our origins but are still far from fully understood.