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Systematic Assessment of Mammalian Skull Specimens for Dental and Temporomandibular Joint Pathology
Published on: August 22, 2022
Mammalian evolution. An arboreal docodont from the Jurassic and mammaliaform ecological diversification
Qing-Jin Meng1, Qiang Ji2, Yu-Guang Zhang1
1Beijing Museum of Natural History, Beijing 100050 China.
Abstract:
A new docodontan mammaliaform from the Middle Jurassic of China has skeletal features for climbing and dental characters indicative of an omnivorous diet that included plant sap. This fossil expands the range of known locomotor adaptations in docodontans to include climbing, in addition to digging and swimming. It further shows that some docodontans had a diet with a substantial herbivorous component, distinctive from the faunivorous diets previously reported in other members of this clade. This reveals a greater ecological diversity in an early mammaliaform clade at a more fundamental taxonomic level not only between major clades as previously thought.
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