Illustration of Didelphodon, a marsupial relative from the Late Cretaceous with the strongest pound-for-pound bite force of any known mammal. Credit: Misaki Ouchida
Phys.org has an article about Mammals during the "Age of Dinosaurs". In a paper in Trends & Evolution, a review paper summarizes the latest fossil evidence of the state of Mammals and their relatives during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. It seems that Mammals were flourishing and experienced a couple ecological radiations during this time.
Paleontologists are trying to dispel a myth about what life was like when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. The false narrative has wormed its way into books, lectures and even scientific papers about this long-ago era.
The myth's focus isn't on dinosaurs. Its main characters are ancient mammals and their relatives, which together are known as mammaliaforms. According to the myth, a world crowded with dinosaurs left little room for mammaliaforms. As a result, mammals and their kin remained tiny, mouse-like and primitive. The myth posits that mammals didn't evolve diverse shapes, diets, behaviors and ecological roles until the K-Pg mass extinction event 66 million years ago killed off the dinosaurs and "freed up" space for mammals.
"This is a very old idea, which makes it very hard to defeat," said David Grossnickle, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington. "But this view of mammaliaforms simply doesn't stand up to what we and others have found recently in the fossil record."
