Scientists have uncovered the fossil of a tiny mammal, no bigger than a mouse, that roamed Chilean Patagonia alongside dinosaurs nearly 74 million years ago.
Image used for illustrative purposes/Río de las Chinas, Patagonia, Chile/Deensel/Wikimedia Commons
Named Yeutherium pressor, this ancient creature weighed just 30 to 40 grams—about the size of a small ounce—and lived during the Upper Cretaceous period, as previously reported by eNCA.
It is the smallest mammal ever found in this part of South America, dating back to when the continent was part of the supercontinent Gondwana.
The fossil, a fragment of jaw with several molars, was discovered in the Rio de las Chinas Valley in Chile’s Magallanes region, roughly 3,000 kilometres south of Santiago.
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Hans Puschel, leader of the research team from the University of Chile and Chile’s Millennium Nucleus research centre, explained that despite its rodent-like appearance, Yeutherium pressor was likely an egg-laying mammal, similar to a platypus, or carried its young in a pouch like marsupials such as kangaroos and opossums.
Its tooth structure suggests a diet consisting mainly of tough plant material.
Like many species of its era, this tiny mammal went extinct around 66 million years ago, at the close of the Cretaceous period, alongside the dinosaurs it once lived with.
The discovery was recently published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
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