Washington, Nov 4 (ANI): Fossils of a squirrel-like mammal with extremely long canines have been unearthed in Argentina and it is being said that the creature might have spent its days darting around dinosaurs almost 100 million year ago, according to a new study.
The discovery of the saber-toothed animal with a petite 4 to 6-inch body, a narrow muzzle and a rounded skull by researchers at the University at Louisville, has broken a prior gap of about 60 million years in the fossil record for South American mammals.
Guillermo Rougier and co-authors Sebastian Apesteguia, Leandro Gaetano have named the new animal Cronopio dentiacutus, which is a dryolestoid, an extinct group of animals distantly related to today's marsupials and placentals.
"It looks somewhat like 'Scrat,' the saber-toothed squirrel from 'Ice Age'," Discovery News quoted Rougier as saying.
The researchers found skulls of the Scrat-like animals embedded in the rock in a remote area of northern Patagonia, about 100 miles from the city of Allen in the Argentinian province of Rio Negro.
It took the team several years of patient lab work to remove the specimens from the rocks.
"We knew it was important, based on the age of the rocks and because we found skulls," he said.
"Usually we find teeth or bone fragments of this age. Most of what we know of early mammals has been determined through teeth because enamel is the hardest substance in our bodies and survives well the passage of time; it is usually what we have left to study.
"The skull, however, provides us with features of the biology of the animal, making it possible for us to determine this is the first of its kind dating to the early Late Cretaceous period in South America.
"This time period in South America was somewhat of a blank slate to us. Now we have a mammal as a starting point for further study of the lineage of all mammals, humans included," he added.
The study has been published in the latest issue of Nature. (ANI)
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