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Science 24 February 2006:
Vol. 311. no. 5764, pp. 1123 - 1127
DOI: 10.1126/science.1123026
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Research Articles

A Swimming Mammaliaform from the Middle Jurassic and Ecomorphological Diversification of Early Mammals

Qiang Ji,1,3 Zhe-Xi Luo,2,1* Chong-Xi Yuan,3 Alan R. Tabrum2

A docodontan mammaliaform from the Middle Jurassic of China possesses swimming and burrowing skeletal adaptations and some dental features for aquatic feeding. It is the most primitive taxon in the mammalian lineage known to have fur and has a broad, flattened, partly scaly tail analogous to that of modern beavers. We infer that docodontans were semiaquatic, convergent to the modern platypus and many Cenozoic placentals. This fossil demonstrates that some mammaliaforms, or proximal relatives to modern mammals, developed diverse locomotory and feeding adaptations and were ecomorphologically different from the majority of generalized small terrestrial Mesozoic mammalian insectivores.

1 Department of Earth Science, Nanjing University, Nanjing 200017, China.
2 Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA.
3 Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Beijing 100037, China.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: LuoZ{at}CarnegieMNH.org

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)