By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | June 27, 2017 01:05pm ET
An odd extinct mammal that lived
in South America during the last ice age had a long neck like a llama's,
three-toed feet like a rhino's and what may have been a tapir-like trunk. This
peculiar combination of traits fueled a mystery lasting nearly two centuries
about how to classify the bizarre beast.
The Macrauchenia genus has
puzzled scientists since Charles
Darwin discovered limb bones and vertebrae fossils "of some very large
animal" in Patagonia and fancied it to be a mastodon, as he wrote in
a letter to his mentor, the naturalist John Stevens Henslow, in March 1834.
Upon analyzing Darwin's finds, the scientist Sir Richard Owen declared in a
species description published in 1838 that the creature resembled a camel,
but uncertainty remained about where Macrauchenia fit on the mammal family
tree.
The recent discovery of a rare
DNA sample from the unusual species provided a crucial missing piece: genetic
evidence confirming Macrauchenia lineage and its closest relatives, scientists
reported in a new study.
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