Near Perfect Fossil Remains of Ancient Digging Mammal Found

A remarkable new fossil of a mammal with sharp digging claws has been traced in the Naran Bulak region of southern Mongolia.

The fossil remains are of Erananodon antelios that is 57 million years old during a period known as the Palaeocene Epoch, soon after the dinosaurs became extinct. Until recently Erananodon antelios was known from a single distorted specimen that gave rise to queries about its evolutionary relationship.

But according to the new study that is being published in the recent Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, the researchers bring a second specimen of Erananodon that sheds more light on this animal.

'Ernanodon is a unique find and represents one of the most complete skeletons ever collected from the Paleocene of the Naran Bulak locality,' said Alexander Agadjanian of the Borissiak Paleontological Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In order to gain more insight on this new fossil, the team had compared the bones Erananodon with the bones of the modern mammals.

Lead researcher Dr Peter Kondrashov, a bone specialist from Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine in Missouri, US, said: "Only a handful of Asian Palaeocene mammals are known by their post-cranial skeleton, which makes Ernanodon a unique source of very important information about its habits, lifestyle and affinities."

It was in 1979 that a team of Soviet Palaeontologists had discovered the first specimen, but they had never done a complete research on that for more than thirty years.

The new specimen has most of the arms, legs and backbone, including the bones that were not preserved in the first specimen that was discovered.

Live Science quoted Kondrashov saying, "Little is known about the Paleocene environment in Asia that Ernanodon called home, but similar latitudes in North America were a mixture of forest and open landscape. Ernanodon lacked adaptations for climbing and had only minimal teeth, suggesting that it was a ground-dweller that ate soft food like insects. Its strong claws and powerful shoulders would have helped it dig into anthills and termite mounds. 

"It was definitely a terrestrial mammal. It doesn't have any adaptations for climbing trees," Kondrashov said. "It was just designed to walk on fairly flat surfaces."

The new study helps to understand the early steps of evolution of major groups of mammals that existed in Asia.