'Prehistoric Beaver' Lived Through End Of Dinosaurs, But Did Not Survive Against Modern Rodents

An amazing ancient mammal that may have lived through the dinosaur extinction has come to light. It is a new acquaintance to science, and is called Kimbetopsalis simmonsae. It seems to have originated from a small group of mammals that look like modern rodents, according to the University of Edinburgh reported.

Originated a 100 million years before the massive extinction of dinosaurs, the rodents had "a dental pattern with sharp incisors and molars with lots of cusps," according to HNGN.

These rodents survived even after the dinosaurs got exterminated, and then spread out over Asia and North America, after which they were overtaken by the rodents of today.

They got overshadowed by competitive rodents that held sway over the food and also quickly reproduced, but these rodents died 35 million years ago.

"Finding this new mammal was a pleasant surprise. It helps fill an important gap in the record of this group of mammals. It's interesting that this odd, now extinct group, was among the few to survive the mass extinction and thrive in the aftermath. It may be because they were among the few mammals that were already well-suited to eating plants when the extinction came. This new species helps to show just how fast they were evolving to take advantage of conditions in the post-extinction world," said Thomas Williamson of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science.

They have given scientists an insight into mass extinction events. They have also been an addition to the family tree of the mammals. This ancient animal was also "potentially an ancestor" of the largest rodent, and looked like a huge beaver.

"We could think of Kimbetopsalis as a primeval beaver, which lived only a few hundred thousand years after the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs. The asteroid caused apocalyptic environmental change, but it seems like mammals began to recover pretty quickly afterwards," said Steve Brusatte, of the School of GeoSciences.

The findings were published in a recent edition of the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.