During Demise Of Dinosaurs, Early Mammals Had Reason To Smile (VIDEO)

Dr. Gregory P. Wilson is an Adjunct Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology and Assistant Professor of Biology at the Burke Museum of the University of Washington. He is also the lead author of a study that was published in Nature only two days ago, titled Adaptive Radiation of Multituberculate Mammals Before the Extinction of Dinosaurs.

Wilson's findings challenge a long-held notion that the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) extinction event was the launchpad for mammalian evolution into a diverse and proliferative group. Because of the shape of their teeth, multituberculates (the proto-mammals Wilson and his colleagues studied) were able to adapt to a diet of newly evolved angiosperms, or flowering plants, that would later survive the K-T event. So although humans never walked with dinosaurs (you hear that, Santorum?), some of our earliest ancestors seem to have done so, coming out on the other side of one of the most famous catastrophes in the history of the planet. And there's good reason to think that they survived because of their amazing teeth. For more information, I Skyped with Wilson about his study. Click on the video above/see the transcript below, and don't forget to leave a comment. Talk nerdy to me!

CLICK HERE FOR FULL TRANSCRIPT

CARA SANTA MARIA: Hi everyone! Cara Santa Maria, here. Do you think a lot of people believe that man walked with dinosaurs?

GREG WILSON: Unfortunately I think that it may be a common notion among a good proportion of the population.

CSM: Young earth creationists aside, why would this fundamentally unscientific idea persist?

GW: Um [laughs] probably because of the Flintstones!

CSM: Dr. Greg Wilson authored a study that was just published in Nature describing one of our earliest ancestors, multituberculates. Of course the Flintstones got it wrong. Cavemen didn't keep sauropods as pets or use other dinosaurs as household tools. But Dr. Wilson and his colleagues' work provides strong evidence that these little guys were on the scene and thriving well before the dinosaurs died out.

GW: The multituberculates and the dinosaurs co-existed for about 90 to 100 million years.

CSM: Multituberculates weren't exactly mammals. But they may be one of our earliest mammalian ancestors.

GW: We don't know exactly how closely we're related, as humans, to multituberculates. Their teeth are so different from ours. But they probably diverged from the lineage that we're on about 170 million years ago. Multituberculates had broad teeth in the back and many bumps and they also had, in the front, a big blade-like tooth and then these saber-like teeth in the very front.

CSM: Holy crap!

GW: Some of the multituberculates were herbivores. Particularly those that evolved 20 million years before dinosaurs went extinct.

CSM: See, scientists have known for some time that rodent-like mammals co-existed with dinosaurs. Until now, they thought that the dinosaurs prevented mammals from diversifying until after the extinction event of the late Cretaceous. But Dr. Wilson's research argues that the special teeth of multituberculates gave them a distinct advantage.

GW: Multituberculates evolved a diversity of tooth forms in correlation with the evolution of angiosperms, or flowering plants. And that probably allowed them to diversify the types of niches that they could be in. And allowed them to survive this catastrophe that killed off the dinosaurs.

CSM: Do you know someone who still believes that man walked with dinosaurs? If so, don't forget to send this video their way. I'd love to hear your thoughts. You can reach out to me on Twitter, Facebook, or leave a comment right here on The Huffington Post. Come on, talk nerdy to me!

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Comments

[Adam Anthony]

03:38 PM on 03/27/2012

You dirty rat,,,,Not sure if primates came from prehistoric rat-squirrls.I think a lemur looks more like a frog then a rodent.I wish more archaeologist would focus more on mammal like animals rathen dinosaurs,and maybe more information out there on prehistoric mammals and reptiles rather then the constant T-rex turned into a chicken theory,lol.......This was cool though,any seen the titanoboa skeleton?

[Mr Anonymous]

03:40 PM on 03/26/2012

I was so excited when this site got a science section, but that feeling of love has been strained with the multitude of articles like this one.

[Lenape105]

11:36 PM on 03/21/2012

Even though humans never walked with dinosaurs, there is a very real possibility that republicans did.

[middleCmusic]

12:02 PM on 03/21/2012

Uh... they were most definitely mammals according to everything I can find. Seems like HuffPost Science is dumbed down for the non-science ppl... but are they even reading this anyway?

[Angel1999]

07:29 PM on 03/21/2012

They're dumbing it down so much they missed the point of the actual research.

[middleCmusic]

07:43 PM on 03/21/2012

Yes, I agree. Although to be fair, I was having a hard time taking my focus off of her and onto what she was saying. Why is it that only in the science section is such a hot woman narrating everything, and it seems (to me) like she's actually doing it in a fairly over the top way. Maybe it's just a coincidence, I suppose.

Either way, I have no idea what the actual discovery was.

[ecceme]

09:41 PM on 03/20/2012

Rodents rock!

this fact I know there can be little doubt
Triassic as others might but lacked
where proto Dino's persist due tolerance to great drought
Humble Rodents not a problem merely chew their way on out

[Craig Koebelin]

06:56 PM on 03/20/2012

Multituberculates diverged from placentals and marsupials some 170M years ago, the man said. They went extinct in the Oligocene, unlike we placental mammals. So the Talk Nerdy girl should get that straight, this study in "Nature" magazine is not about our ancestors, but a related group.

[TYRANNASAURUS]

06:08 PM on 03/19/2012

Early Mammals Walked With Dinos...

How surprising is that since they were here first....duh?

[Angel1999]

08:09 PM on 03/19/2012

That's the message from the headline, but that's not really the significance of the actual paper. Needless to say, they don't do a very good job of getting the actual message across.

[jimboy71]

07:00 PM on 03/21/2012

It is always a struggle here, isn't it?

[phal4875]

04:33 PM on 03/19/2012

This is not a major surprise. Rick Santorum and Michele Bachmann have said that their ancestors rode dinosaurs to work.

[puffin poster]

04:04 PM on 03/19/2012

quote: What, if anything is the relevance here?
The quote is a reply to my misunderstood incoherent ramblings.

I would rather believe in a high power that cares for man. I like the idea of a god that took the time to wright a book to help humans in life. I get sick to think I was a slimy slug that evolved to be a man.

I really see this story as a stepping stone for smart people educated in sciences.
My ramblings are trying to explain a theory that is hard for me to explain I go to the next level, a step up in science and beyond the educated posters here. I get the felling that most fail to understand in a supper intelligent creation.

Really, how hard is it to understand a being that knows all things?
Look at the past as a science project that had a lot of testing. :)

[phal4875]

04:35 PM on 03/19/2012

Seeing yourself as a former "slimy bug that evolved to be a man" is very uplifting. Think of the progress we have made.

[JShankel]

10:29 PM on 03/19/2012

"I would rather believe in a high power that cares for man."

Wishing does not make it so.  We draw conclusions based on evidence.

You'll let us know when you produce any tangible results from your higher level of awareness.  The one dominated by wish-thinking.

[utahgirl]

01:47 PM on 03/19/2012

One of the things I don't understand about those unfortunate people who deny the science behind evolution by claiming that humans walked with dinosaurs is that these same people will go willingly to the doctor and take "a blue pill" for particular kinds of cancers or submit to an MRI for diagnosis. The understanding that the scientific process is the same no matter what the result seems to cause an unbreachable cognitive dissonace. It's like duh folks, scientific method is scientific method.

[demajors]

08:33 AM on 03/19/2012

It is a truly sad fact that in an age when we have more factual information about the lives of ancient organisms on this planet than ever before, willful ignorance is SO pervasive, that almost every scientific article finds it necessary to mention it.

[Mamaduck]

09:41 AM on 03/19/2012

It's been that way from the beginning. With or without evidence, people will believe what they want to believe rather than seek the truth. It's that way in every aspect of our lives.

[AmericaninIndia]

12:52 PM on 03/19/2012

Agreed 100%. Unfortunately, our minds fall prey to "availability bias" in which we as a species tend to prefer ideas which are comforting, or more familiar, over new facts which may challenge our assumptions.

Science is a true triumph for us, because its very function is to continually question existing assumptions and shed new light on our reality. Unfortunately, a minority of people on this planet are willing to take that wondrous journey.

[Giantevilhead]

03:35 AM on 03/19/2012

Take that birds. Teeth made us the dominate species on earth, what did wings or hollow bones ever do for you?

[jimboy71]

12:12 PM on 03/19/2012

Gave them the skies?

[puffin poster]

02:12 AM on 03/19/2012

I do not study any in depth, science, scripture or UFOs. funny a lot beleve in all three thories and some one has to be right and the other two wrong. :)

[phal4875]

04:37 PM on 03/19/2012

It could be that some deity created all the laws of science and that UFOs just utilized those laws in ways we cannot yet understand.

[Proud Progressive]

12:43 PM on 03/21/2012

In an infinite universe-anything is possible.
But From the HGTU
"It is known that there are an infinite number of worlds, simply because there is an infinite amount of space for them to be in. However, not every one of them is inhabited. Therefore, there must be a finite number of inhabited worlds. Any finite number divided by infinity is as near to nothing as makes no odds, so the average population of all the planets in the Universe can be said to be zero. From this it follows that the population of the whole Universe is also zero, and that any people you may meet from time to time are merely the products of a deranged imagination."
And there are fewer Gods than people.

[KellyMBray]

12:17 AM on 03/20/2012

Science wins, scripture is in another contest category, and the UFO's crashed next to Bigfoot.

[negogato]

01:12 AM on 03/19/2012

flocks of anti-science posting today. Good night to all.

[jimboy71]

01:14 AM on 03/19/2012

Good night.

[negogato]

01:22 AM on 03/19/2012

Night Friend - I really enjoy your Science posts. :)

[Tristan Sands]

12:09 AM on 03/19/2012

Cara, this means our ancestors diversified with flowering plants: how beautiful!

[KellyMBray]

01:07 AM on 03/19/2012

At one point , yes. Common ancestors.

[phal4875]

04:39 PM on 03/19/2012

My wife must have once been a rose - no, the sweet aroma, not the thorns.

[Craig Koebelin]

07:15 PM on 03/20/2012

This particular study documents how the multituberculates, a group that went extinct in the Oligocene, diversified with flowering plants, but of course it stands to reason that so did the placental mammals, the birds and insects, pollen collectors. A quick visit to Wikipedia confirms this.