At a site in British Columbia known for yielding insect, plant and fish fossils, researchers for the first time have discovered two different tiny mammal remains, a hedgehog and a tapir.
According to LiveScience.com, British Columbia's climate was probably more like northern Oregon's when these little animals lived, some 50 million to 53 million years ago during the Eocene Epoch period. This discovery marks the first time anyone has found a mammal's fossil at the Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park site.
The team published their work in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
"Within Canada, the only other fossil localities yielding mammals of similar age are from the Arctic, so these fossils from British Columbia help fill a significant geographic gap," study co-author Dr. Natalia Rybczynski, of the Canadian Museum of Nature, said in a press release.
The team was not able to identify the tiny hedgehog's species, but named it Silvacola acares, which means "tiny forest dweller." The hedgehog was no bigger than two-and-a-half inches in length and its miniscule jaw bone needed to be removed from its surrounding rock via CT scan so not to damage it.
The other fossil was identified as a Heptodon, which is an extinct relative to the modern tapir. The Heptodon could have grown to about three to four feet in length and a foot in height, roughly half the size of a modern tapir.
"Heptodon was about half the size of today's tapirs, and it lacked the short trunk that occurs on later species and their living cousins. Based upon its teeth, it was probably a leaf-eater, which fits nicely with the rainforest environment indicated by the fossil plants at Driftwood Canyon," study lead author Dr. Jaelyn Eberle, of the University of Colorado, said in the release.
Driftwood Canyon has been known to provide researchers with pristinely preserved fossils that are mostly found where the bottom of a lake once was. Previous plant fossils have already tipped scientists off to the significantly warmer climate in the area during the Eocene Epoch. The climate, which almost never had freezing temperatures, was likely favorable to the Heptodon, as modern tapirs are known to live in tropical areas.
"Driftwood Canyon is a window into a lost world - an evolutionary experiment where palms grew beneath spruce trees and the insects included a mixture of Canadian and Australian species. Discovering mammals allows us to paint a more complete picture of this lost world," study co-author Dr. David Greenwood, of Brandon University, said in the release. "The early Eocene is a time in the geological past that helps us understand how present day Canada came to have the temperate plants and animals it has today. However, it can also help us understand how the world may change as the global climate continues to warm."
