It could fly, swim and dig burrows
Chinese in dense forests inhabited by dinosaurs, 160 million years ago was inhabited by two furry creatures, resembling flying squirrels. They glided through the air from tree to tree, with his whole life saying that the flight has a future, even if you have to fly in the Jurassic period.
Fossils with the remains of the dermal membrane, helping the animal to plan, scientists have discovered in China.
Paleontologists believe that it was two kinds of flying creatures — Maiopatagium furculiferum, discovered in Liaoning province, and Vilevolodon diplomylos of Hebei province. They were scientists attributed to extinct side branch of mammals.
These two were the vanguard of the air force mammals. Only 100 million years after the dinosaurs were extinct, there was bats and other species of gliding animals.
Mammals did not get under the feet of the dinosaurs — they inhabit their own niche, for life. They swam like the beavers, climbed high into the mountains, dug deep holes, and even preyed on baby dinosaurs.
“Despite the fact that early mammals lived in ecosystem dominated by dinosaurs, they occupied many ecological niches,” says paleontologist zhe-XI Luo from the University of Chicago, published their study in the journal “Nature”.
Scientists compare prehistoric bats with existing four groups of flying animals: squirrels-flying squirrels of North America and Asia, silkworm from Africa, Australia’s marsupial sugar possums and sherstokryly from South-East Asia.
Maiopatagium was 23 cm in length, nearly the size of the flying squirrel, had the small teeth of a bat, suitable in order to gnaw the fruits and succulent stems of plants. Vilevolodon was smaller and had strong teeth of a rodent.
Examining the bones of the front and rear legs, paleontologists concluded that they could climb trees like sherstokryly, and balance on a branch upside down like a bat.
Fossil mammals lived at the same time with the feathered pterosaurs, evolved later in birds.
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