Experts came across the fossil in China’s Inner Mongolia region, in rock formed from lake sediment.<\/p>\n
The well-preserved fossil meant that scientists could see evidence of the animal’s fur and skin, helping them build a clearer picture of what it looked like. <\/p>\n
Megacauda sungei lived during the Jurassic Period in the age of dinosaurs and was around 50 cm long, weighing 1 to 2 kg.<\/p>\n
Researchers say it swam like a platypus, hunted like an otter and had a tail similar to that of a beaver.<\/p>\n
It could be found in lakes and rivers hunting fish and salamanders.<\/p>\n
Study co-author Thomas Martin from the University of Bonn explained: “It swam by \u200busing its front and hind legs for paddling \u200band performing undulating movements with its tail.<\/p>\n
“It probably dug burrows in the river banks or lake shores.”<\/p>\n
Zhe-Xi Luo, the study’s senior author from the University of Chicago, said Megacauda may have been active at night or around dawn and dusk.<\/p>\n
He added that it would have had to look out for meat-eating predators.<\/p>\n
“The predatory threat against Megacauda would likely be from the feathered theropod dinosaurs,” Luo said.<\/p>\n
Scientists also believe Megacauda to be the oldest-known semiaquatic mammal-like animal that has been discovered so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Experts came across the fossil in China’s Inner Mongolia region, in rock formed from lake sediment. The well-preserved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":798448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-798447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}