September 4, 2018

Kayentatherium wellesi adult with its babies (Image courtesy Eva Hoffman / The University of Texas at Austin)

An article published in the journal “Nature” describes a research on the origin and evolution of mammals’ great brains. Eva Hoffman and Timothy Rowe of the University of Texas at Austin’s Jackson School of Geosciences examined fossils of Kayentatherium wellesi, a relative of today’s mammals that lived in the Jurassic period, concluding that a key moment in their evolution was a kind of trading brood power for brain power.