Jurassic Mother

Here's another of those artist's impressions of a long-dead creature which I'm finding far more interesting than most contemporary art. This little fellow is Juramaia sinensis, which means "Jurassic mother from China”. Judging by its teeth, this small, tree-dwelling, shrew-like animal is the earliest fossil mammal ever found, and it takes our ancestors back another 35 million years. Zhe-Xi Luo wrote the paper for the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, USA, posted today by Nature magazine and by BBC News (title link).