Researchers
find the mountain beaver's ancestor had a larger relative brain size
Date: June 27, 2018
Source: University of Toronto
Summary:
The
ancestor of the modern day mountain beaver had a larger relative brain size,
offering a rare example of brain size decrease over time.
A
new U of T Scarborough study has found that the ancestor of the modern day
mountain beaver had a larger relative brain size.
The
research, which is published in the journal Palaeontology, offers a rare
case of an animal's brain becoming smaller relative to its body size, likely
due to a change in its lifestyle over time.
The
mountain beaver (Aplodontia rufa) is
a rodent that's adapted to burrowing, meaning it lives mostly underground in
tunnels dug deep into the soil. But fossil records show that its
30-million-year old ancestor was better adapted to living in trees, similar to
squirrels.
"Early
squirrels and the mountain beaver's ancestor had a similar, relative brain
size," says Ornella Bertrand, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of
Anthropology at U of T Scarborough and lead author of the study.
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