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Animals that lived before the dinosaurs looked like fat lizards with very small heads and had a semi-aquatic lifestyle like that of a hippopotamus, according to fossils recently unearthed in France. The amphibians, which represent a previously unknown genus and species of mammal ancestor, measure about 12 feet (4 meters) in length, the researchers report in the October issue of the journal. Palaeo Vertebrates , published online in July. They dub a new species Lalieudorhynchus gandi ; it lived about 265 million years ago in Pangea supercontinent, just before the era of the dinosaurs. The unusual animal fossil was first discovered in 2001 in the Lodève Basin in southern France, by study co-author and paleontologist Jörg Schneider, a professor in the Department of Paleontology and Stratigraphy at the University of Freiberg in Germany, and doctoral candidate Frank Körner. They found two large ribs, each measuring 24 inches (60 centimeters) long, in a rocky riverbed. During subsequent

Mammals can generate their own body heat and control their body temperature. This process is known as endothermic or warm-blooded. Scientists believe that may be the reason why mammals tend to dominate almost everything ecosystem . Warm-blooded mammals are more active than cold-blooded animals. They can live in different environments, from frozen poles to boiling deserts. And they breed faster. Soft tissue that will provide information about being warm or cold blooded is rare preserved in fossil . So paleontologists, or experts in the study of fossils, don’t know exactly when mammals evolved and turned into warm-blooded creatures. A group of scientists tried to answer that question in a study recently published in Natural . Ricardo Araújo is a paleontologist at the University of Lisbon. Araújo and a group of researchers proposed that the shape and size of inner ear structures called canals could be used to study body temperature. The movement of fluid through the ear canal helps

Mammals and birds generate their own body heat and control their body temperature. Mammals and birds generate their own body heat and control their body temperature. This process is known as endothermic, or warm-blooded, and may be one reason why mammals tend to dominate nearly every global ecosystem. Warm blooded animals are more active both day and night than cold blooded animals and they reproduce more quickly. However, until now it is not known exactly when endotherms came from the ancestors of mammals. Our new study, just published in Nature, changes that. A combination of scientific intuition, fossils from the Karoo region of South Africa and cutting-edge technology has provided the answer: endothermy developed in the ancestors of mammals about 233 million years ago during the Late Triassic period. The origin of mammalian endothermy has been one of the great unsolved mysteries of paleontology. Ma