KNOWLEDGE SEEKERS
Macalester College/Raymond Rogers
©Denver Museum of Nature & Science/David Krause
Photo by Helen Cullyer
At long last, SBU scientists reveal Madagascar’s ‘crazy beast’ Harnessing the Technology of our Research Giants
BY DANIEL DUNAIEF
Stony Brook University/John Griffin
Clockwise from above, David Krause with skeleton of Adalatherium hui; James Rossie studies CT scan of the Adalatherium cranium; a life-like reconstruction of ‘crazy beast’ with field study area where skeleton was discovered in background; co-author Lydia Rahantarisoa seated at excavation site; and David Krause helps carry plaster jacket containing skeleton of Adalatherium hui from excavation site to road. See more photos online at www.tbrnewsmedia.com
It’s not exactly a Rembrandt hidden in the basement until someone discovers it in a garage sale, but it’s pretty close. More than two decades ago, a Malagasy graduate student named Augustin Rabarison spotted crocodile bones in northwestern Madagascar, so he and a colleague encased them in a plaster jacket for further study. David Krause, who was then a Professor at Stony Brook University and is now the Senior Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, didn’t think the crocodile was particularly significant, so he didn’t open the jacket until three years later, in 2002. When he unwrapped it, however, he immediately recognized a mammalian elbow joint further down in the encased block of
SPOTLIGHTING DISCOVERIES AT (1) COLD SPRING HARBOR LAB (2) STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY & (3) BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LAB
rock. That elbow bone, as it turned out, was connected to a new species that is a singular evolutionary masterpiece that has taken close to 18 years to explore. Recently, Krause, James Rossie (an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Stony Brook University) and 11 other scientists published the results of their extensive analysis in the journal Nature. The creature, which they have named Adalatherium hui, has numerous distinctive features, including an inexplicable and unique hole on the top of its snout, and an unusually large body for a mammal of its era. The fossil is the most complete for any Mesozoic mammal discovered in the southern hemisphere. “The fossil record from the northern continents, called Laurasia, is about an order of magnitude better than that from Gondwana,” which is an ancient supercontinent in the south
National Geographic Society/Maria Stenzel
that included Africa, South America, Australia The Adalatherium, whose name means and Antarctica, Krause explained in an email.“crazy beast” from a combination of words “We know precious little about the evolutionin Malagasy and Greek, helps to broaden of early mammals in the southern hemisphere.”the understanding of early mammals called This finding provides a missing piecegondwanatherians, which had been known to the puzzle of mammalian evolution infrom isolated teeth and lower jaws and from the southern continents during the Mesozoic Era,cranium of a new genus and species, Vintana Krause wrote. sertichi, that Krause also described in 2014.
The closest living relatives of gondwanatherians were a group that is well known from the northern hemisphere, called multituberculates, Krause explained. The body of Adalatherium resembled a badger, although its trunk was likely longer, suggested Krause, who is a Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus at Stony Brook. Krause called its teeth “bizarre,” as the molars are constructed differently from any other known mammal, living or extinct. The front teeth were likely used for gnawing, while the back teeth likely sliced up vegetation, which made probably made this unique species a herbivore. The fossil, which probably died before it became an adult, had powerful hind limbs and a short, stubby tail, which meant it was probably a digger and might have made burrows. Rossie, who is an expert in studying the inside of the face of fossils with the help of CT scans, explored this unusually large hole in the snout. “We didn’t know what to make of it,” he said. “We can’t find any living mammal that has one.” Indeed, the interpretation of fossils involves the search for structural and functional analogs that might suggest more about how it functions in a living system. The challenge with this hole, however, is that no living mammal has it. Gathering together with other cranial fossil experts, Rossie said they agreed that the presence of the hole doesn’t necessarily indicate that there was an opening between the inside of the nose and the outside world.
It was likely plugged up by cartilage or other soft tissue or skin. “If we had to guess conservatively, it would probably be an enlarged Mounted cast skeleton hole that allowed the of Adalatherium hui passage of a cluster Courtesy of Triebold Paleontology of nerves and blood “All cars vessels,” Rossie said. That begs the question: why would the have some things in common,” said Rossie, animal need that? Rossie suggests that there might have been who is interested in old cars and likes to fix a soft tissue structure on the outside of the nose them. The common structural elements of cars but, at this point, it’s impossible to say the nature include front and back seats, a steering wheel, of that structure. and dashboard. With the maxillary sinus “what The Associate Professor, who has been a part we found is that the steering wheel was in the of the research team exploring this particular back seat instead of the front.” fossil since 2012, described the excitement as A native of upstate Canton, which is on the being akin to opening up a Christmas present. border with Canada, Rossie enjoyed camping “You’re excited to see what’s in there,” he growing up, which was one of the initial said. “Sometimes, you open up the box and see appeals of paleontology. Another was that he what you were hoping for. Other times, you saw an overlap between the structures nature open the box and say, ‘Oh, I don’t know what had included in anatomy with the ones people to say about this [or] I don’t know what I’m put together in cars. looking at.’” A resident of Centerport, Rossie lives with For Rossie, one of the biggest surprises his wife Helen Cullyer, who is the Executive from exploring this fossil was seeing the Director of the Society for Classical Studies, position of the maxillary sinus, which is in a and their seven-year-old son. space that is similar across all mammals except As for the Adalatherium, it would have had this one. When he first saw the maxillary sinus, to avoid a wide range of predators, Krause he believed he was looking at a certain part of explained, which would have included two the nasal cavity, where it usually resides. When meat-eating theropod dinosaurs, two or he studied it more carefully, he realized it was three large crocodiles and a 20-foot-long in a different place. constrictor snake.