The oldest ancestor of mammals is found in Mallorca, Spain

50 million years before the appearance of the first mammals, the gorgonopsian roamed the Earth. It belonged to the therapsids, a group of extinct animals that for a long time were called “mammalian reptiles.” Although this is no longer considered correct, because evidence has shown that they were not reptiles, the other half of the name is true: the scientific community considers them our ancestors. Gorgonopsians were born from eggs, like snakes or crocodiles, but they were warm-blooded and their legs already had the optimal configuration to move at greater speed on land, as dogs or horses do now.

The oldest remains of a gorgonopsian have just been discovered in Mallorca, Spain. An international team of paleontologists, led by the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont (ICP-CERCA), collected several fossils of the ancestor of mammals at a site in the municipality of Banyalbufar. Regardless of their age, researchers are amazed by the location of these remains. Most of them have been identified mainly in South Africa and Russia.

What were the ancestors of mammals like?

The best way to imagine a gorgonopsian is to think of a saber-toothed tiger. These therapsids were predators with long fangs. Paleobiologists also describe them as dog-like animals, but without fur or ears. Gorgonopsians are extinct, but they lived during the Permian period, about 250 million years ago.

Thanks to excavation campaigns in Mallorca, it is now known that they lived at least 270 million years ago and that their territory extended to the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. The remains found belonged to a small-medium sized specimen, about one meter in length. According to paleontologists, It is the oldest gorgonopsium on the planet.

“The large number of bone remains is surprising. We have found everything from skull fragments, vertebrae, ribs, to a very well preserved femur. Actually, when we started this excavation, we never thought that we would find so many remains of an animal of this type in Mallorca” said Rafel Matamales, curator of the Balearic Museum of Natural Sciences and one of the main authors of the study published in Nature Communications.

The gorgonopsians of Mallorca

The Permian period is characterized by hosting the supercontinent Pangea. It presented variations of extreme climates that went from icy periods to hot and arid periods. Also in this period the first coniferous forests appeared and the ecosystem was still dominated by reptiles. Therapsids were also present with representatives such as Theriodontia, Anomodontia, Dinocephalia and Gorgonopsios.

During the time of Pangea, Mallorca was not the island it is now, but part of the surface of the supercontinent. In that period, it was located closer to the equator, in the strip occupied today, for example, by the Congo or Guinea. According to previous dating and research, the climate was humid with dry seasons. The site where the oldest gorgonopsians were found was probably a plain with temporary pools where they rested.