Galulatherium, the first Late Cretaceous mammal from Africa

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Researchers from Ohio University have described a new species of potential gondwanathere from the Late Cretaceous of Tanzania. It has been given the name Galulatherium jenkinsi ("Jenkins' Galula beast"), with the genus name originating from the Galula rock unit where the specimen was discovered, which is an area of the Rukwa Rift Basin that is named after a local village in the area, and the Latin word "therium," meaning "beast," and the species name originating from the late Farish Jenkins, a professor of anatomy and organismic biology at Harvard University who was a strong supporter of the Rukwa Rift Basin Project, which discovered the specimen in addition to several other species, in its early development. This new mammal is the first genus of mammal from the Late Cretaceous that has ever been found in Africa, revealing the diversity of mammals on the planet at this time. The fossil was originally discovered in 2002 and was announced in 2003, but was not given a distinct name until 2019, when advancements in high-resolution x-ray computed tomography enabled the researchers to create a detailed model of the jaw specimen, which allowed them to determine whether or not it truly was a new species. The holotype consists of a nearly complete lower jaw belonging to a squirrel-sized mammal that shows characteristics of the enigmatic gondwanatheres, a group of mammals from the Southern Hemisphere that have been extremely hard to classify due to their unique features. Here is an image of the 3D model of the holotype lower jaw as well as a link to the paper describing it.



Paper (open access!): http://www.app.pan.pl/archive/published/app64/app005682018.pdf

[Halichoeres]

Very exciting to find a potential gondwanathere, even if it's pretty fragmentary. Any point of comparison will increase the power of future phylogenetic analyses.