PREHISTORIC MAMMALS IN CHINA | Facts and Details

DINOSAUR-ERA MAMMALS IN CHINA

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Swimming beaver-like mammalSmall mammals called triconodonts lived 200 million years in Liaoning. Triconodonts ranged in size from the size of a small lizard to a cat and endured for 100 million years. Triconodont fossil have been found in other places. The fossils found in Liaoning were the first complete skeletons. Liaoning has also yielded a rat-size mammal known as “Gobicinodon zofiae” that lived 125 million years ago. The well-preserved fossil shows evidence of fur and placental birth. The creatures appears to have fed on insects and was capable of climbing trees.

A 195-million-year-old creature, the size of a paper clip, found in 1985 in the Yunnan province, is believed to be a missing link between reptiles and mammals. It has space in its skull for a relatively large brain and a jaw with reptile-like and mammal-like features.

In February 2006, a team lead by Zhe-Xi Luo of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History announced the discovery of a swimming, fish-eating, beaver-like creature that lived 164 million years at the Daohuguo site in Inner Mongolia. The mammal had a flat-scaly tail like a beaver and seal-like teeth and was called “Castorocaunda lutrasimilis”. This mammal and others found in China debunked the conventional view that dinosaur-age mammals were timid shrew-like creatures that slinked around in the shadows and became strong and powerful animals only after a dinosaur-killing asteroid hit the earth.

Super-Rat Roamed China 160 Million Years Ago

In August 2013, in a study published in the journal Science, scientists announced that they had discovered a fossil with the oldest known ancestor of modern rats — an agile creature that could climb, burrow and eat just about anything — in China. The species — Rugosodon eurasiaticus — had flexible ankles for tree-climbing and sharp teeth that could gnaw both animals and plants,. Such adaptations helped these ancient rat-like rodents known as multituberculates become among the longest lived mammals in history, study leader Chong-Xi Yuan from the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing, said. The creatures originated 160 million years ago during the Jurassic Period and lived for some 100 million years in the age of the dinosaurs before modern rodents overcame them. [Source: AFP, August 16, 2013]

AFP reported: Their abilities also led to their evolution and diversification into a range of tree-dwelling and plant-eating mammals that follo said the researchers from China and the US. "Some could jump, some could burrow, others could climb trees and many more lived on the ground," said co-author Zhe-Xi Luo of the University of Chicago. "The tree-climbing multituberculates and the jumping multituberculates had the most interesting ankle bones, capable of 'hyper-back-rotation' of the hind feet."

The latest fossil was found in the Jurassic Tiaojishan Formation in eastern China. Its name comes from the Latin "rugosus" for wrinkles and "odon" for tooth, because of its bumpy molar surface and "eurasiaticus" for its widespread territory. Luo said the fossil is similar to those found in Portugal, suggesting that it and its relatives were widely found across the entire Eurasian continent. The creature was believed to have a body mass of about 65 to 80 grams (2.3-2.8 ounces).Researchers said the tooth and ankle adaptations likely evolved very early in the creatures' existence, helping them to become so long-lived as a group.

125-Million-Year-Old Flying Squirrel

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130-million-year-old mammals found in ChinaIn December 2006, scientists announced the discovery of a 125-million-year-old mammal, “volaticotherium antiquius” that look remarkably like a modern flying squirrel. Discovered the Daohuguo site in Inner Mongolia, the same place the beaver-like mammal was discovered, it had webbing between its legs that it could use to sail through the trees. It was the earliest known example of gliding fight among mammals and showed that mammals were more sophisticated than previous thought and were experimenting with flight around the same time dinosaurs were. Before the discovery the earliest evidence of gliding mammals was among animals that lived 30 million years ago.

“Repenomanus robustus” was a cat-size, weasel-like mammal with large pointy teeth and powerful jaws that fed on small dinosaurs. One 130-million-year-old fossil specimen was found with the remains of a small beaked dinosaur called a Psittacosaurus in its stomach. The dinosaur was a juvenile. The remains suggest it was wolfed down in chunks rather than chewed. It is not known whether “Repenomanus robustus” hunted the dinosaur or scavenged it, but it had strong legs and sharp teeth and could have easily been a hunter.

“Repenomanus giganticus” was a similar creature whose fossils were also found in Liaoning. The largest dinosaur-age mammal every discovered, is weighed about 14 kilograms and was about a meter in length, making it about the size of a badger or a mid-size dog or about twice the size of Repenomanus robustus. Presumably it fed on small dinosaurs too.

125-Million-Year-old Fossil Shows Mammal Attacking a Dinosaur

In a study published in the journal Scientific Reports in July 2023, scientists said they had found . A dramatic 125-year-old fossil in northeastern China that shows a badger-like mammal in the act of attacking a plant-eating dinosaur, mounting it and sinking its teeth into its victim's ribs. Reuters’ Will Dunham wrote: Dating to the Cretaceous Period, it shows the four-legged mammal Repenomamus robustus — the size of a domestic cat — ferociously entangled with the beaked two-legged dinosaur Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis — as big as a medium-sized dog. The scientists suspect they were suddenly engulfed in a volcanic mudflow and buried alive during mortal combat. [Source: Will Dunham, Reuters, July 19, 2023]

"Dinosaurs nearly always outsized their mammal contemporaries, so traditional belief has been that their interactions were unilateral — the bigger dinosaurs always ate the smaller mammals," said paleobiologist Jordan Mallon of the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa, who helped lead the study. "Here, we have good evidence for a smaller mammal preying on a larger dinosaur, which is not something we would have guessed without this fossil," Mallon added.

Most mammals during the Mesozoic Era, the age of dinosaurs, were shrew-sized bit players in the larger theater of life, doing well to avoid becoming someone else's lunch. Repenomamus shows at least some mammals gave as good as they got. "I think what's key here is that Mesozoic food webs were more complex than we had imagined," Mallon said.

The area in Liaoning Province where the virtually complete fossil was found is called the "Chinese Pompeii" owing to various fossils of animals buried in volcanic eruptions. Examining the fossil was like a crime scene analysis. Repenomamus is perched atop the prone Psittacosaurus, gripping the jaw and hind leg while biting into the ribcage. Repenomamus measures 1-1/2 feet (47 centimeters) long. Psittacosaurus is four feet (120 centimeters) long. Both are thought to be not quite full adults. "There have been specimens of carnivorous dinosaurs preying on plant-eating dinosaurs before, but there has never been an example of a mammal preying on a dinosaur," said Canadian Museum of Nature paleontologist and study co-author Xiao-chun Wu.

The researchers discounted the idea that the Repenomamus and Psittacosaurus fossil showed a mammal merely scavenging a carcass. "For one, the mammal is on top of the dinosaur as though it was trying to subdue it, which the scavenging hypothesis doesn't account for," Mallon said. "Second, there are no bite marks on the bones of the dinosaur, which we would expect if it had been sitting out for long, exposed to scavengers. Lastly, the hind foot of the mammal is trapped by the folded hind leg of the dinosaur, which is unlikely to have happened if the dinosaur had already been dead when the mammal came across it," Mallon added. While Psittacosaurus was an early relative of the horned dinosaur lineage, it lacked facial horns and a head crest. It possessed a parrot-like beak to crop plant material.

Prehistoric Giant Apes and Tibetan Wooly Rhinos

In ancient times parts of China were inhabited by giant orangutan-like apes, ancient hoses, saber toothed tigers, giant hyenas, mastodons, elephants, and ancestors of giant pandas. The southeast side of Tianzhushan is Qianshan Basin, in Anhui controlled by Tan-Lu Fault Zone. The western basin is Dabieshan high mountainous area formed by ancient metamorphic rocks, the southeast side is strip-shaped low mountains formed by Paleozoic and Mesozoic stratums, and the inner basin developed a set of red detrital rocks. More than 50 species of mammalian and reptile fossils that are all mid-late Paleocene fossils were discovered in more than 50 Paleocene fossil sites, with a history of 60 million years. Newly found fossils which have been given names by experts are: Heomys orientalis, Anhuichelys tsienshanensis, Archaeolambda tabiensis, Sinostylops promissus, Diacronus wanghuensis, Obtususdon hanhuaensis, Mimotona wana, Agama sinensis, Anictops tabiepedis, etc, and Wanshuina lii found in 1991 is the first bird fossil in the stratum of Paleocene period. There is a special Paleocene fossil exhibition room in Qianshan County. Tianzhushan is internationally recognized as the most important place of Paleocene vertebrate fossils and the birthplace of rodents. [Source: National Commission of the People's Republic of China for UNESCO]

Panthera blytheae

The largest primate ever was a Pleistocene ape that lived in southern China and Vietnam and had inch-wide teeth and is thought to have subsisted, like pandas, mainly on bamboo. A gigantic ape, standing over three meters (10 feet) tall and weighing up to 545 kilograms (1,200 pounds) lived roughly 2 million years ago to 300,000 years ago in Southeast Asia and China. This animal, Gigantopithecus blackii, was the largest primate ever. It may have co-existed with early homo species but unlikely lived at the same time modern men (homo sapiens). See Gigantopithecus Under PRIMATES — MONKEYS, MACAQUES, GIBBONS, AND LORISES—IN CHINA factsanddetails.com

Gigantopitjecus may lived as recently as 100,000 years ago, a time when humans were also thought to have inhabited the region. Jack Rink, a Canadian palaeontologist from McMaster University who is studying the creature, told the Times of London, “Probably the creature lived in the caves and fed in bamboo forests, while people were living lower in river valleys. It is quite likely that humans came face to face with the ape.”

Some scientists think Tibet the source of Ice Age mammals? Stephanie Pappas wrote in LiveScience: “High on the Tibetan Plateau, paleontologists have uncovered the skull of a previously unknown species of ancient rhino, a woolly furred animal that came equipped with a built-in snow shovel on its face. This curiosity, a flat, paddle-like horn that would have allowed it to brush away snow and find vegetation beneath, suggests the woolly rhinoceros was well-adapted for a cold, icy life in the Himalayas about 1 million years before the Ice Age. Those adaptations may have left the rhino perfectly poised to spread across Asia when global temperatures plummeted, ushering in the Ice Age. "We think that the Tibetan Plateau may be a cradle for the origins of some of the Ice Age giants," said study author Xiaoming Wang, a curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. Such large, furry mammals ruled the world during Earth's cold snap from 2.6 million to about 12,000 years ago. "It just happens to have the right environment to basically let animals acclimate themselves and be ready for the Ice Age cold." [Source: Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience, September 2, 2011; See Woolly Rhino Originated From Tibet? Under WOOLLY RHINOS AND CAVE BEARS factsanddetails.com ]

Oldest Big Cat Fossil Found in Tibet

In November 2013, scientists announced they had discovered the oldest big cat fossils ever found — from a previously unknown species "similar to a snow leopard" — in the Himalayas in Tibet. The skull fragments of the newly-named Panthera blytheae have been dated between 4.1 and 5.95 million years old. The discovery, described by US and Chinese palaeontologists in an article published in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B supports the theory that big cats evolved in central Asia — not Africa — and spread outward. [Source: James Morgan, BBC, November 11, 2013]

The BBC reported: The scientists “used both anatomical and DNA data to determine that the skulls belonged to an extinct big cat, whose territory appears to overlap many of the species we know today. "This cat is a sister of living snow leopards — it has a broad forehead and a short face. But it's a little smaller — the size of clouded leopards," lead author Dr. Jack Tseng of the University of Southern California said. “This ties up a lot of questions we had on how big cats evolved and spread throughout the world>

“"Biologists had hypothesised that big cats originated in Asia. But there was a division between the DNA data and the fossil record." “The so-called "big cats" — the Pantherinae subfamily — includes lions, jaguars, tigers, leopards, snow leopards, and clouded leopards. DNA evidence suggests they diverged from their cousins the Felinae — which includes cougars, lynxes, and domestic cats — about 6.37 million years ago. But the earliest fossils previously found were just 3.6 million years old — tooth fragments uncovered at Laetoli in Tanzania, the famous hominin site excavated by Mary Leakey in the 1970s. Fossil skull of Panthera blytheae It is rare for such an ancient carnivore fossil to be so well preserved

“The new fossils were dug up on an expedition in 2010 in the remote Zanda Basin in southwestern Tibet, by a team including Dr Tseng and his wife Juan Liu — a fellow palaeontologist. They found over 100 bones deposited by a river eroding out of a cliff, including the crushed — but largely complete — remains of a big cat skull. "We were very surprised to find a cat fossil in that basin," Dr Tseng told BBC News. "Usually we find antelopes and rhinos, but this site was special. We found multiple carnivores — badgers, weasels and foxes."

“Among the bones were seven skull fragments, belonging to at least three individual cats, including one nearly complete skull. The fragments were dated using magnetostratigraphy — which relies on historical reversals in the Earth's magnetic field recorded in layers of rock.

Giant Rhino Species Found in Gansu: Among Largest Mammals Ever

In June 2021, researchers said they found a giant, new 26.5-million-year-old rhinoceros species — Paraceratherium linxiaense — in Gansu Province on the edge of northeastern Tibetan Plateau that is among largest mammals ever to walk the earth. The findings was published by a team led by Tao Deng, a professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in the journal Communications Biology. The skulls and legs of a giant rhino are longer than those of all reported land mammals. [Source: Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY, June 18, 2021]

Paraceratherium transouralicum, different than the species described here

USA TODAY reportedl: “Researchers uncovered a completely preserved skull of the new species, which is said to have a deeper nasal cavity than other giant rhinoceros species. It also has a slender skull, short nose trunk and long neck. “"What's extraordinary about this particular thing is that it's a wonderfully preserved fossil, so it tells us a lot about the anatomy of the individual group," said Lawrence Flynn, a co-author of the study.

“The Paraceratherium linxiaense had a body weight of 24 tons, similar to the total weight of four large African elephants or eight white rhinos, according to Deng. It had a shoulder height of about 16 feet and a body length of about 26 feet. Its head could reach a height of about 23 feet to browse leaves of tree tops.

“The giant rhino populated Asia in areas including Pakistan, China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan, and the genus Paraceratherium was the most widely distributed form of the giant rhino, according to researchers. Flynn says the most surprising part of the fossil discovery was that it revealed that vegetation productivity was high in China, Pakistan and other areas in Asia where these rhinos and other mammalian creatures lived. "To support an animal that size, there must have been a lot of vegetation," Flynn said. "What we see in terms of vegetation globally today is not an accurate picture of what was in the past because there was higher vegetation productivity in the past."

Image Sources: Chinese Academy of Sciences ; Wikimedia Commons, Panthera blytheae from Nature.com

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last Updated March 2025