Snapshots From The Meeting

摘要

Earliest tree-climbers. A 255-milion-year-old creature called Suminia getmanovi caused a stir a few years ago when researchers examining its skull discovered it had the first known adaptations for highly efficient chewing of tough vegetation. Now a look at the rest of the skeleton reveals another record: the earliest evidence of living in trees. Jorg Frobisch and Robert Reisz of the University of Toronto, Mississauga, in Canada studied a large block of stone that preserved 15 mostly complete skeletons. "This block provides a wealth of new information about Suminia," Frobisch said at the meeting. The 50-centimeter-long animals had very long hands and feet-about 40% of the length of the limbs-and digits adapted for grasping. The new skeletons may be the most complete early ther-apsid (mammal-like reptile) yet found, so they could shed more light into the early evolution of the group, which flourished in the Permian and Triassic periods between 265 million and 225 million years ago. Kenneth Angielczyk of the Field Museum in Chicago, Illinois, notes that apart from a few burrowing species, most Permian therapsids were unspecialized four-legged herbivores. "The fact that [Suminia] was going in another direction is pretty cool," he says.