Photo of the day - Cute Insect-Murdering Mammal Had Roots in Dinosaur Age
Hundreds of years ago, hungry barn owls gobbled down small mammals called Nesophontes and regurgitated pellets of their remains. That mammal is now extinct, but a genetic analysis of the owl pellets reveals how it evolved from some of the earliest mammals approximately 70 million years ago. Nesophontes was a genus of insect-eating critters that lived on the Caribbean islands, including Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and the Cayman Islands. They were small, just between 0.3 and 4.4 ounces. (10 and 125 grams), and although their name hints at something sinister — it roughly translates to "island murder" in Greek — that's likely due to how many insects they devoured, the researchers said.The Nesophontes genus includes eight species, the last of which went extinct about 500 years ago when the Europeans arrived in the Caribbean, accompanied by the invasive black rats (Rattus rattus) that lived on their boats, the researchers said
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/cute-insect-murdering-mammal-had-roots-dinosaur-age-132154474.html
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Source: http://www.livescience.com/56080-caribbean-mammal-traced-to-dinosaur-age.html
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