Ancient wildebeest cousin with dinosaur horn
A wildebeest relative that has been extinct for more than 50 thousand years had a unique hollow in its skull that was likely used to generate trumpet-like calls.
Extinct mammal had trumpet-like skull feature similar to those found in dinosaurs
An ancient wildebeest-like animal called Rusingoryx likely trumpeted its way across the plains of Africa between 55 and 75 thousand years ago. The extinct herbivore fossil was discovered in Kenya in 2011. Although it was similar to the wildebeest in many ways, it had one distinctive feature that is unique among mammals.
Rusingoryx had a very usual trumpet-like nasal passage, similar to the nasal crests of some hadrosaur dinosaurs. A recent study of Rusingoryx skull by Haley O'Brien, a PhD candidate in Biological Sciences at Ohio University, has found that the feature was most likely used to generate low frequency sound for long distance communication.
Although Rusingoryx and hadrosaurs are not related, and separated by many millions of years, the study also revealed that the two took similar evolutionary steps to develop this feature.
Related Links
- Paper in Current Biology
- Ohio University release
- National Geographic story
- Discovery News story