The elongated cranium of a marten dubbed “Martes” sansaniensis from the Hammerschmiede website (left) in contrast with the cranium of as we speak’s pine marten (Martes martes). Credit: Nikolaos Kargopoulos
An worldwide staff of researchers studies that no less than 20 species of carnivorous mammals lived 11.5 million years in the past in what’s now the Hammerschmiede fossil website in southern Germany. The website has been a spotlight of consideration for the reason that 2019 discovery of the primary recognized ape to stroll upright, Danuvius guggenmosi. The present Hammerschmiede staff consists of Nikolaos Kargopoulos and different colleagues from the University of Tübingen, researchers from Zaragoza and Barcelona, and Professor Madelaine Böhme from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment on the University of Tübingen. Their research has been printed within the journal PLOS ONE.
The current excavations, led by Professor Madelaine Böhme, have uncovered a unprecedented variety of fossil animals and vegetation, together with greater than 350 particular person finds of mammalian carnivores. Many of them have been semi-aquatic, residing and looking on land and within the water, or they spent a lot of their time in timber. “The species have been tailored to the river surrounded by forest that was current within the area on the time,” Böhme says.
Various ecological niches
Among these animals (belonging to the order “Carnivora”) recorded on the website are 4 marten-like species, two relations of as we speak’s wolverine, 4 species of otter, three species of skunk, two species from the pink panda household, three completely different genets, and a number of other species from teams of which there are not any residing representatives as we speak. For the doctoral researcher Nikolaos Kargopoulos, the primary writer of the research, a really well-preserved cranium of a marten (“Martes” sansaniensis) is likely one of the most spectacular specimens. “This one will certainly assist [with] establishing [a] new genus of huge extinct marten,” he says.
Lower jaw of the brand new weasel species, Circamustela hartmanni, which ate solely meat. Credit: Nikolaos Kargopoulos
The researchers additionally found a beforehand unknown species of weasel—one of many smallest predators from the location, estimated to have weighed simply 1–3 kilograms. Special diversifications within the tooth reveal that this species fed solely on meat. The researchers named it Circamustela hartmanni, in honor of the Hartmann household, on whose property the Hammerschmiede website is situated and who’ve supplied entry to it for all these years.
According to Madelaine Böhme, wolverines, skunks and even pink pandas are to be anticipated in Europe’s fossil file of 11.5 million years in the past, however not in such excessive focus and variability of species.
“Such an exceptionally giant variety of small carnivorans, with 20 species on the identical website, means that the ecosystem on the time was thriving and will assist all these completely different varieties,” she says. “Based on an evaluation of physique mass, feeding and the style through which they moved round, every of the species found seems to have assumed a special position within the ecosystem. They used completely different pure sources and have been thus in a position to keep away from competitors,” in keeping with Kargopoulos.
Unexpected variations between women and men in fossil mouse deer
More data:
Nikolaos Kargopoulos et al, The exceptionally excessive variety of small carnivorans from the Late Miocene hominid locality of Hammerschmiede (Bavaria, Germany), PLOS ONE (2022). DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0268968
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Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
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Martens, wolverines, skunks and pink pandas—Germany was as soon as a paradise for small carnivorans (2022, July 13)
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