Scientists looked at the stunningly well-preserved fur of a 125-million-year-old rat-sized mammal, and found the ancient animal suffered from fungal infections still seen today and had hedgehog-like spines.
The animal, dubbed Spinolestes xenarthrosus, represents the earliest-known examples of microscopic structures of hair and spines in mammalian evolutionary history, the University of Chicago Medical Center reported.
"Spinolestes is a spectacular find. It is stunning to see almost perfectly preserved skin and hair structures fossilized in microscopic detail in such an old fossil," said study co-author Zhe-Xi Luo, professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago. "This Cretaceous furball displays the entire structural diversity of modern mammalian skin and hairs."
