Scientists have unearthed the fossil of a tiny mouse-sized mammal that lived during the time of the dinosaurs in the Chilean Patagonia.
The mammal, named Yeutherium pressor, weighed around 30–40 grams and lived in the Upper Cretaceous period about 74 million years ago.
According to palaeontologists, Yeutherium pressor is the smallest mammal found in the South American region, dating back to the era when the continent formed part of Gondwana.
The lead scientist of the team which discovered this tiny mammal said they recovered “a small piece of jaw with a molar and the crown and roots of two other molars.”
Hans Puschel is the lead scientist of the team from the University of Chile and Chile's Millennium Nucleus research centre on early mammals.
The discovery was published this month in the leading British scientific journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Scientists found the fossil in the Río de las Chinas Valley in Chile’s Magallanes region, about 3,000 kilometres (1,864 miles) south of Santiago.
Interestingly, despite its small rodent-like shape and size, Yeutherium pressor was a mammal that may have laid eggs, like the platypus, or carried its young in a pouch like kangaroos or opossums.
The shape of the teeth, according to researchers, suggests it probably had a diet of relatively hard vegetation.
Like the dinosaurs with which it coexisted, the tiny mammal abruptly went extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 66 million years ago.
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