Volaticotherium
' Volaticotherium '
- Inner Mongolia (China)
- Volaticotherium antiquum; Meng et al. 2,006
Volaticotherium antiquum is thanks to its wing membranes to glide befähigtes, small mammal from the Mesozoic era. The fossil was described in December 2006 for the first time scientifically and dated to about 130 million years ago. Previously gleitfliegende mammals younger only of at least 70 million years geological layers were known. The fossil shows that mammals already at the same time opened up the air space for itself as the feathered dinosaur.
The name of the fossil is composed of Latin volaticus ( " winged, flying" ), Greek θερίον " therion " ( "hairy beast" ) and Latin antiquus ( " ancient "). It was excavated in the Daohugou layers in the northeast of the People 's Republic of China in Inner Mongolia at the place Daohugou ( Ningcheng county, the city of Chifeng belonging ), below a layer of rock, whose age has been dated to 125 million years. This therefore represents a minimum age for Volaticotherium, however, now also an age of about 158 Ma BP ( Oxfordian ) is contemplated.
The fossil was, according to the first description about 120-140 mm long and weighed about 70 grams, its size thus corresponded roughly to the American Zwerggleithörnchen ( Assapan ) Glaucomys volans. The shape of his foot bones indicates an arboreal lifestyles, similar to the extant flying squirrel. Due to other anatomical features must, according to the first publication be assumed that the animal was an agile glider because of its light weight and in relation to this large wing membranes indeed, but probably could not capture flying insects during sliding; the dentition suggests insects as the main food.
Because of its anatomical features, the fossil was named not only with a new genus and species names. Rather, it has also been associated has been the only way the new mammalian order Volaticotheria and in this new family Volaticotheriidae.
The discoverer and describer of the fossil, Jin Meng (Chinese孟津, Pinyin Meng Jin ), comes from the People's Republic of China and had completed his academic training in the subject palaeontology in the 1980s in Beijing, but was then gone to the USA and in New York become active as a curator at the American Museum of Natural History. With its Beijing training center, the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, however, he was still in regular contact, so it hitherto unedited fossils were left to study in March 2006. One of these findings with the code number IVPP V 14739 was after superficial examination assigned as uninteresting copy the Triconodonta, but Meng recognized its dentition as atypical. A closer analysis of the fossil under the microscope he also discovered the outlines of a skin membrane that was covered thickly with hair and could be clamped on either side of the body between all four legs and the approach of the long tail, as soon as the animal 's legs to the side of body stretched away. After six months of preparation and database searching, it was clear that the fossil any previously known type, not even is one known to date belong to the mammalian order.