A fossil baby helped scientists explain how mammals thrived after the dinosaur extinction

Early mammal, Pantolambdas, took over the world after the dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago.

Sixty-two million years ago, a mother gave birth to a baby. Overcoming the shock of birth in a matter of minutes, the baby began to explore the world around it. The baby started to suckle from its mother, a natural instinct shared by all animals of its kind, the mammals.

Each day it grew, and after a month or two, it began feeding for itself on a diet of shoots and leaves. It would have become independent shortly after, but tragedy struck. After only two-and-a-half months, it died.

But this baby’s story doesn’t end there. Because 62 million years later, its distant cousins (humans) would discover its skeleton, fossilised in the harsh desert of New Mexico, in the south west of the US.

It’s classified as a species of early mammal, a bear-like animal called Pantolambda bathmodon. The group to which the species belongs (Pantodonta) went extinct in the Eocene era, some 10 million years after the fossil baby was born, leaving no living descendants.

An international team of scientists and I used its bones and teeth to reveal its life in unprecedented detail. And our results may help to explain how mammals like Pantolambda took over the world after the dinosaurs went extinct 66 million years ago.

Your skeleton tells the story of your life. Trapped inside the dense minerals of your pearly smile, tiny lines mark each day of the growth of your teeth, which continue to grow inwards throughout most of your life.

Also Read: We found the oldest ever vertebrate fossil heart. It tells a 380 million-year-old story of how our bodies evolved