Volaticotherium

''Volaticotherium antiquum'' (meaning "ancient gliding beast") is an extinct, gliding, insectivorous mammal that lived in Asia during the Jurassic period, around 164 mya. It is the only member of the genus ''Volaticotherium''.

The discovery of ''Volaticotherium'' provided the earliest-known record of a gliding mammal (70 million years older than the next oldest example), until the discovery of the contemporary haramiyidans ''Maiopatagium'', ''Vilevolodon'' and ''Xianshou'', and provided further evidence of mammalian diversity during the Mesozoic Era. The closely related and significantly older ''Argentoconodon'' shows similar post-cranial adaptations for aerial locomotion also seen in ''Volaticotherium''.

Discovery

The only known fossil of ''Volaticotherium'' was recovered from the Daohugou Beds of Ningcheng County, Inner Mongolia, China. The age of the Daohugou Beds is currently uncertain and the subject of debate, but most studies suggest an age of around 164 plus or minus 4 million years ago. The description was published in an issue of the journal ''Nature''.

Description

''Volaticotherium'' had a gliding membrane, sometimes compared to modern-day flying squirrel, that extended not just between the limbs and at least the tail base, but also the digits, "sandwiching" them. It was densely covered by fur.Meng, J.; Hu, Y.-M.; Wang, Y.-Q.; Wang, X.-L.; Li, C.-K. (2007). "Corrigendum: A Mesozoic gliding mammal from northeastern China". Nature 446 (7131): 102. . . The tail was flat, increasing the airfoil, and the limbs were proportionally long, comparable to those of modern flying and gliding mammals. The toes were grasping, as typical for arboreal mammals; the hand, however, was poorly preserved and its anatomy is therefore unclear. The teeth of ''Volaticotherium'' were highly unusual, possessing long, curved, backwards-pointing cusps, possibly used for shearing; this, combined with the long canines, indicates a carnivorous diet, which at its small size was probably composed of insects. This is supported by a study ranking it among insectivorous taxa, while the related ''Argentoconodon'' ranked in carnivorous taxa.
It has been noted that most gliding mammals are predominantly herbivorous, which would make volaticothere carnivory truly exceptional. In particular, ''Volaticotherium'' itself has been compared to insectivorous bats, and its femur has unique adaptations among mammals that make it resistant to flight stresses, and render terrestrial locomotion cumbersome.

Classification

The phylogenetic analysis conducted by the authors of the description of ''Volaticotherium antiquum'' recovered it as the sister taxon of the clade that contained, among other taxa, eutriconodonts, multituberculates, spalacotheriid and tinodontid "symmetrodontans", dryolestids, metatherians (including marsupials) and eutherians (including placental mammals). As the analysis did not place ''Volaticotherium'' within any of the previously known main groups of Mesozoic mammals, the authors of its description erected a separate family Volaticotheriidae and order Volaticotheria for it. However, Zhe-Xi Luo (2007) mentioned that ''Volaticotherium'' might actually be a eutriconodont. This was eventually confirmed by the phylogenetic analyses conducted by Leandro C. Gaetano and Guillermo W. Rougier (2011, 2012); these analyses recovered ''Volaticotherium antiquum'' as a eutriconodont that belonged to the family Triconodontidae and subfamily Alticonodontinae, and was particularly closely related to the genera ''Argentoconodon'' and ''Ichthyoconodon'', and possibly ''Triconolestes''.A. O. Averianov and A. V. Lopatin. 2011. Phylogeny of Triconodonts and Symmetrodonts and the Origin of Extant Mammals. Doklady Biological Sciences 436:32-35 . Uhen/M. Uhen/ref> More recent studies keep this relationship, but move ''Volaticotherium'', ''Argentoconodon'', ''Ichthyoconodon'' and ''Jugulator'' (and, possibly by association, ''Triconolestes'') in a more basal position among triconodontids, away from alticonodontines.Thomas Martin, Jesús Marugán-Lobón, Romain Vullo, Hugo Martín-Abad, Zhe-Xi Luo & Angela D. Buscalioni (2015). A Cretaceous eutriconodont and integument evolution in early mammals. Nature 526, 380–384.

References

*

External links

Online article from ''Nature'', with illustrationBBC News: Earliest flying mammal discovered
* ttps://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061213/ap_on_sc/gliding_mammal AP: Mammals may have flown before birds
{{Taxonbar, from=Q132474

Eutriconodonts
Jurassic mammals of Asia
Gliding animals
Fossil taxa described in 2006
Taxa named by Jin Meng
Taxa named by Yaoming Hu
Taxa named by Yuanqing Wang
Taxa named by Xiaolin Wang (paleontologist)
Taxa named by Chuankui Li
Prehistoric mammal genera