New chinchilla-like mammal discovered in Colorado provides new clues to how life returned after asteroid wiped out dinosaurs

Thousands of fossils discovered in Colorado have provided clues about how life recovered after the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

A team working at Corral Bluffs discovered a new mammal species that has suggested that Earth may have come back to life within 300,000 years, giving way to mammals 30 times larger than those that survived the mass extinction.

The discoveries have answered many questions about what happened in the first million years after the dinosaurs were killed off, and have filled in gaps in the evolution of the mammalian tree.

One particular fossil was that of a mammal the size of a chinchilla that roamed the Earth 65 million years ago and was the ancestor of all modern-day ungulates such as pigs and cows. This shows how diverse the animals actually followed the catastrophic event.

“We didn’t know much about the small mammals (that lived after the mass extinction), but now we have a complete skull and jaw that tells us about the group that gave rise to modern ungulates,” says paleontologist Tyler R. Lyson. with the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, told DailyMail.com.

“The base of the mammalian tree of life has long been in an evolutionary gap,” says Lyson.

‘The recent discovery of Militocodon lydae helps fill the gap for all modern ungulates.’

Militocodon lydae, the ancestor of pigs and cows, was uncovered from rocks dating back about 61,000 years after the extinction of the dinosaurs.

The small ancient mammal was between 9 and 16 inches tall and weighed just over two pounds – about the size of a large rat – and emerged about 600,000 years after the mass extinction.

Researchers found that several teeth were still present in the jaw, revealing what types of plants also thrived at the time.

The small mammals’ diet has indicated that nutritional vegetation began to grow in the area, allowing it to thrive in what was once a wasteland.

The new species is named in honor of Sharon Milito and Lyda Hill, two women Lyson said are very important to science and Colorado Springs – a city outside Corral Bluffs, Lyson told DailyMail.com.

Scientists have long been looking for clues about how life returned to the planet after the asteroid that wiped out 75 percent of life on Earth.

The 12.5 kilometer wide asteroid was traveling at a speed of 43,000 kilometers per hour when it impacted what is now the Gulf of Mexico and exited the Chicxulub crater.

The collision caused global wildfires that released tons of soot, filling the sky and blocking out the sun for two to 15 years.

“Plants came back hundreds of thousands of years later, but it was a very selective selection,” Lyson said.

“I think it’s just time and stability that led to the first diversity of plants and animals.”

The wealth of fossils, including Carsioptychus – another extinct herbivorous mammal the size of a pig – showed that About 300,000 years after the mass extinction, mammals saw their first large body size increases.

At that point, temperatures began to rise, another nine degrees Fahrenheit, and the landscape became a thriving botanical habitat.

Lyson and his team found that these creatures were 30 times larger than the mammals that survived the dinosaur massacre, which also suggested that plants were diversifying as well.

The fossils also revealed that mAmmals dominated life on the planet, as walnut trees were also the largest group of plants in the area, taking the place of the dinosaurs that owned the planet.

“Here we saw large herbivorous mammals, which is important because most of those who survived the mass extinction were omnivores,” Lyson explained, noting that it took about 300,000 years for this region to develop a stable environment.

And mammal diversity had tripled.

The next major jump in mammals occurred 700,000 years after the catastrophic event, when another warming event occurred.

“At that time, lentils and peas covered the earth, creating even larger mammals,” Lyson said.

“These mammals are about the size of a small wolf and larger than any mammal that lived alongside the dinosaurs.”

This was observed when the team discovered fossils of an Ectoconus ditrigonus, a herbivore with five fingers on all four limbs.

“This is a 100-fold increase in body size compared to the mammals that survived the extinction,” Lyson said.

“Mammals wouldn’t experience this kind of rapid growth for another 30 million years.”

The animal was about the size of a sheep with a long, heavy tail.

He noted that the discoveries in Colorado only reveal how life recovered in this area.

“The recovery of life was not the same everywhere on the planet,” Lyson said.

However, the reason Corral Bluffs is so rich in fossils may be due to special concretions, a type of rick that forms around fossils.

Lyson likened finding the fossils in concretions to “opening an oyster shell to find a pearl.”

“When we started uncovering mammal fossils at Corral Bluffs, it was like going to the optometrist and the slider turned on and everything came into focus,” he said.

‘Suddenly the game was on and we knew exactly what to pay attention to. All we had to do was find these extraordinary concretions, crack them open and see what amazing fossils were inside.”