The tiny brain is the main feature of the fossil animal, the remains of which were discovered by paleontologists from Romania on the territory of Transylvania. Material dedicated to the amazing mammal appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
We are talking about a representative of the order of multi-tubercles - this animal lived in an isolated island space and had some very interesting features. The animal's brain was very small, like for a mammalian brain, but some parts of the organ, at the same time, were quite well developed - for example, the cerebellum and olfactory bulbs.
“The multi-tuberosities got their name from the tubercles that grew on their molars. Once they lived all over the planet, but in the Paleogene, that is, about thirty-five million years ago, these animals became completely extinct,”the scientists say.
The multi-lump, found in Romania, resembled a rat and weighed about one hundred and seventy grams. The territory of modern Romania, where the animal lived, used to be an archipelago, so the fossil species developed insular dwarfism, which primarily affected the brain.
Kolesnikov Andrey