Experts Call Mammal Ancestors Like Small-Headed Fat Lizards

KOMPAS.com- Experts have succeeded in describing the fossils excavated in French as an ancestor mammal.

This fossil has a rather strange appearance because it looks like a fat lizard with a very small head.

Not only that, the animal with a length of up to 4 meters also has a semi-aquatic lifestyle like a hippopotamus.

This can be seen from the bone structure of L.gandi which is supple and flexible.

Researchers also call animals that represent the genus and species mammal ancestors by the name Lalieudorhynchus gandi.

The ancestor of mammals, L. gandi, according to experts, lived about 265 million years ago on the supercontinent Pangea, just before the era of the dinosaurs.

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Quoted from Live ScienceWednesday (3/8/2022) in 2001 paleontologist Jörg Schneider of the University of Freiberg Germany and doctor candidate Frank Korner found fossils of the ancestor of the mammal, L. gandi, in the Lodeve Basin, southern France.

They found two large ribs, each measuring 60 centimeters, in the rocky riverbed.

During subsequent visits to the site, Korner found additional bones from the animal, namely a thigh bone measuring 35 cm long and a shoulder blade measuring 50 cm long.

After finding the mammal fossils, they also conducted a lengthy analysis for 20 years.

That’s because most of the fossils are encased in hard sandstone and their preparation took years to complete.

From the partially well-preserved fossil skeleton, the expert then concluded that the fossil ancestor of the mammal was a caseid-like primitive creature in the genus Lalieudorhynchus.

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Caseid itself is a group of extinct reptile fossils that have mammalian characteristics and are considered to be the ancestors of mammals.

The animal was then described as a stout lizard nearly 4 meters long that lived during the Permian, a period that began about 299 million years ago and ended about 252 million years ago.

It coincides with the beginning of the Triassic period and the rise of the dinosaurs.

Caseid types, especially the herbivores, have small heads and barrel-shaped bodies.

Then animals also have large digestive tracts to destroy plants and despite their appearance like caseid reptiles are the ancestors of mammals.

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“This very diverse group of mammal ancestors was the dominant group before the age of the dinosaurs,” said Frederik Spindler, study co-author and scientific director at the Altmuhltal Dinosaur Museum in Denkendorf, Germany.

While examining the newly discovered fossils, he then concluded that they belonged to a new species.

L. gandi could also be a highly developed caseid species unlike those seen in other caseid species.

Furthermore, L. gandi is not the missing link in the evolutionary lineage of the mammalian family tree.

However his status as one of the youngest caseids ever discovered is possible to understand mammal evolution.

The finding of the fossil that experts call the ancestor of this mammal has been published in the journal Palaeo Vertebrates.

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