"Ancient Fossil Is Found on Danish Island"

[Jan Van Dijk <janvandijk@tdcadsl.dk>]

Greetings all

The University of Lund, Sweden has a press release today stating that yet 
another fossil tooth has been found on the island of Bornholm, Denmark. The new 
find is from a 145 ma old multituberculate mammal.
The news realese is in Swedish, though.
http://www.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=1187&news_item=618


The news in English can be found here,
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&ncid=624&e=6&u=/ap/20041014/ap_on_sc/mammal_fossil_1

It says:
-----
STOCKHOLM, Sweden - A Swedish geologist has found what appears to be the oldest 
known fossil from a mammal ever found in Scandinavia ? a 145-million-year-old 
tooth from a prehistoric rodent, a Swedish university said Thursday. 

The tooth was found in the southern part of the Danish island Bornholm during 
excavations by Johan Lindgren, a geologist at Lund University in southern 
Sweden. 

Before the discovery, the oldest mammal fossils found in Scandinavia were 
between 20 million and 30 million years old, the university said in a 
statement. 

Dated back to 145 million years ago, the tooth seems to be of a similar age to 
the oldest mammal fossils found in other parts of the world, Lindgren said. 

The shape of the tooth suggests it was a small rodent, about 10 centimeters 
(four inches) long, he said. 

"We don't know for sure what this animal ate, but it probably was a herbivore ? 
a small, primitive, mouse-like animal that lived in the shadow of the big 
dinosaurs, and that was probably food for many of the predatory dinosaurs." 

----


Best wishes,
Jan C. van Dijk
/Denmark