Santiago: A fossil of a skunk-like mammal that lived throughout the age of dinosaurs has been found in Chilean Patagonia, including additional proof to current proof that mammals roamed that a part of South America lots sooner than beforehand thought. Part of the creature’s fossilised jawbone with 5 tooth connected have been found near the well-known Torres del Paine Nationwide Park. Christened Orretherium tzen, that means ‘Beast of 5 Tooth’ in an amalgam of Greek and a neighborhood indigenous language, the animal is believed to have lived between 72 and 74 million years in the past throughout the Higher Cretaceous interval, on the finish of the Mesozoic period, and been a herbivore.
Previous to its discovery, and the tooth of the Magallanodon baikashkenke, a rodent-like creature, in the identical space final 12 months, solely mammals residing between 38 and 46 million years in the past had been discovered within the southernmost tip of the Americas, the group that found it mentioned.