A rodent-like animal that survived the cataclysmic event that brought about the end of the dinosaurs could help explain how mammalian species came to dominate the Earth.
According to BBC News, a team of researchers detailed a species named Kimbetopsalis simmonsae in a new study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. The animal would have looked like a beaver and likely stayed away from meat.
"We realized pretty quickly that this was a totally new type of mammal that no one has seen before," study co-author Stephen Brusatte, of the University of Edinburgh, told BBC News. "The other part of the name - psalis - means 'cutting shears' and is in reference to [the] blade-like teeth."
No longer roaming the Earth, the animals also known as multituberculates lived during the Jurassic Period some 100 million years ago.
"[During the Jurassic] these animals were all pretty small," Brusatte said. "Then the asteroid hit, wiped out the dinosaurs and suddenly - in geological terms - this [group of animals] started to proliferate and get bigger.
"That's how the rise of mammals started and really the end result of that is us being here today."
The animals lived in present-day New Mexico, which is where its remains were discovered and their environment was hot, but littered with swamps and other bodies of water.
"It was an incredibly diverse habitat," Brusatte told Discovery News. "Lots of turtles and alligators and birds. And also tons of other mammals. Within a few hundred thousand years after the dinosaur extinction, mammals were really prospering. Some of these were placental mammals, so early members of our group."
