Loading...
Reptile-like physiology in Early Jurassic stem-mammals
Newham, E Benton, MJ Gostling, NJ Haberthür, D Jernvall, J Kankaanpää, T Kallonen, A
Newham, E
Benton, MJ
Gostling, NJ
Haberthür, D
Jernvall, J
Kankaanpää, T
Kallonen, A
Citations
Altmetric:
Advisors
Editors
Other Contributors
Affiliation
EPub Date
Issue Date
12/10/2020
Submitted Date
2020-10-13
Subject Terms
Animal physiology
palaeontology
palaeontology
Collections
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Other Titles
Abstract
Despite considerable advances in knowledge of the anatomy, ecology and evolution of early mammals, far less is known about their physiology. Evidence is contradictory concerning the timing and fossil groups in which mammalian endothermy arose. To determine the state of metabolic evolution in two of the earliest stem-mammals, the Early Jurassic Morganucodon and Kuehneotherium, we use separate proxies for basal and maximum metabolic rate. Here we report, using synchrotron X-ray tomographic imaging of incremental tooth cementum, that they had maximum lifespans considerably longer than comparably sized living mammals, but similar to those of reptiles, and so they likely had reptilian-level basal metabolic rates. Measurements of femoral nutrient foramina show Morganucodon had blood flow rates intermediate between living mammals and reptiles, suggesting maximum metabolic rates increased evolutionarily before basal metabolic rates. Stem mammals lacked the elevated endothermic metabolism of living mammals, highlighting the mosaic nature of mammalian physiological evolution.
Citation
Newham, E., Gill, P.G., Brewer, P. et al. Reptile-like physiology in Early Jurassic stem-mammals. Nat Commun 11, 5121 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18898-4
Publisher
Journal
Research Unit
PubMed ID
PubMed Central ID
Embedded videos
Type
Journal Article
Item Description
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
NHM Repository
NHM Repository
Series/Report no.
ISSN
EISSN
2041-1723
ISBN
ISMN
GovDoc
Test Link
License
openAccess