Article of the day for March 15, 2018
The Article of the day for March 15, 2018 is Ferugliotherium.
Ferugliotherium was a mammal of the Late Cretaceous, around 70 million years ago. The genus was first described in 1986 but misidentified as a member of Multituberculata, an extinct group of rodent-like mammals, on the basis of a single tooth, a low-crowned molar. It is thought to have had a small body mass, about 70 g (2.5 oz), and may have eaten insects and plant material. Its remains have been found in two geological formations of present-day southern Argentina, where it is part of a mammal fauna that includes the sudamericid Gondwanatherium and a variety of dryolestoids. The upper and lower incisors were long and rodent-like, with enamel on only one side of the crown. A fragment of the lower jaw shows that the tooth socket of the lower incisor was very long. Although Ferugliotherium had much lower-crowned teeth than the sudamericids, they shared the same backward jaw movement during chewing and essentially similar patterns in their incisors and on the chewing surface of their molar-like teeth, with small enamel prisms.
Ferugliotherium was a mammal of the Late Cretaceous, around 70 million years ago. The genus was first described in 1986 but misidentified as a member of Multituberculata, an extinct group of rodent-like mammals, on the basis of a single tooth, a low-crowned molar. It is thought to have had a small body mass, about 70 g (2.5 oz), and may have eaten insects and plant material. Its remains have been found in two geological formations of present-day southern Argentina, where it is part of a mammal fauna that includes the sudamericid Gondwanatherium and a variety of dryolestoids. The upper and lower incisors were long and rodent-like, with enamel on only one side of the crown. A fragment of the lower jaw shows that the tooth socket of the lower incisor was very long. Although Ferugliotherium had much lower-crowned teeth than the sudamericids, they shared the same backward jaw movement during chewing and essentially similar patterns in their incisors and on the chewing surface of their molar-like teeth, with small enamel prisms.
