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WASHINGTON — The tusks of a stoutly built plant-eating mammal relative that inhabited Antarctica 250 million years ago are providing the oldest-known evidence that animals resorted to hibernation-like states to get through lean times such as polar winters.
The research published on Thursday focused on a four-legged forager called Lystrosaurus whose fossils have been found in China, Russia, India, South Africa and Antarctica. It was an early member of the evolutionary lineage that later gave rise to mammals.
The findings indicated that Lystrosaurus entered a state of torpor – a temporary reduction in metabolic activity – to cope with the long, perpetually dark winters in the Antarctic Circle when food was scarce, although Earth then was much warmer than today and the region was not ice-bound.
The findings also suggested Lystrosaurus, which may have had hair, was warm-blooded.
Hibernation is a form of torpor found in warm-blooded animals like certain bears, rodents, echidnas, hedgehogs and badgers.
Lystrosaurus, ranging from roughly the size of a pig to the size of a cow, possessed a turtle-like beak and lacked teeth except for a pair of ever-growing tusks protruding from its face useful for digging up tasty roots and tubers. These tusks had incremental growth marks visible in the form of dentine – the hard tissue that forms the bulk of a tooth – deposited in concentric circles like tree rings.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMibGh0dHBzOi8vbmF0aW9uYWxwb3N0LmNvbS9wbW4vZW52aXJvbm1lbnQtcG1uL21hbW1hbC1saWtlLXRyaWFzc2ljLWNyZWF0dXJlLWJlYXQtcG9sYXItd2ludGVycy1ieS1oaWJlcm5hdGluZ9IBmgFodHRwczovL25hdGlvbmFscG9zdC5jb20vcG1uL2Vudmlyb25tZW50LXBtbi9tYW1tYWwtbGlrZS10cmlhc3NpYy1jcmVhdHVyZS1iZWF0LXBvbGFyLXdpbnRlcnMtYnktaGliZXJuYXRpbmcvd2NtLzdkMjUyYTE3LTg0NmItNDMxNi05NTAzLWExMTJkZmFmNWUwNC9hbXAv?oc=5
2020-08-27 22:51:26Z
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