Discovery in Chile: an unknown mammal rubbed shoulders with dinosaurs

Researchers have discovered, in Patagonia, the fossil of a small mammal in the size of a mouse that rubbed shoulders with dinosaurs and was hitherto unknown to the community of paleontologists. The announcement of this find took place last week in an article published by the British scientific journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society B”. The Yeutherium Pressor weighed between 30 and 40 grams and lived in the upper Cretaceous, about 74 million years ago.

It is the smallest mammal ever identified in this South American region. The fossil consists of “a small piece of jaw with a molar and the crown and the root of two other molars”, explains to AFP Hans Puschel, at the head of the team of scientists of the University of Chile and the Chilean Research Center Millennium Nucleus.

The researchers identified it in the Rio de Las Chinas valley, a river in the Chilean region of Magallanes (south), some 3,000 kilometers south of Santiago. The Yeutherium Pressor was, according to his discoverers, a mammal capable of laying eggs – like the ornithorynques of today – and carrying its young in a pocket such as kangaroos or opossums.

The shape of his teeth suggests that his diet consisted of relatively hard plant foods. Like the dinosaurs who lived at the same time as him, this little mammal disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous, some 66 million years ago.