In Germany found ancient fossils of an ancestor of the horse

German paleontologists found fossils of an ancestor of the horse the age of 48 million years, together with fragments of the uterus and fetus surviving. This 2 scientists discovered the oldest fossil and the fruit, described in the journal PLoS One. Briefly about the opening told the Los Angeles Times.

Jens Frantzen (Jens Franzen) found the fossils in the quarry Messel, near Darmstadt. The remains belong to an animal Eurohippus messelensis, lived during the Eocene. This ancestor of horses by size does not exceed the current Terriers. But the fruit of ibrahimpasa in appearance almost the same as in modern horses.

During the Eocene in the quarry was a lake surrounded by tropical forests. Animals drowned in this lake, turned out to be in the form of fossils due to the original interaction between microbes and iron in lake water.

After diving to the bottom, on the soft tissues of the animals were akkumulirovalasj bacteria. The carbon dioxide they produced, reacts with iron, in consequence of which formed the carbonates of iron. They settled on the surface of microorganisms, forming a strong bacterial Mat, silhouettes which exactly repeated the outlines of decaying soft tissues. "The bacteria themselves turned himself to stone," explained Frantzen.

However biologists did not immediately found a fetus among the remains: when carrying out radiographic imaging, they at first considered only a "grey shadow" between the uterus and lumbar vertebrae of ibrahimpasa. Only after some time they found that this spot is not a random concentration of tissues and the remains of the abdominal muscles, and the oldest petrified fetus.

At the time of death the female eurohipeco stayed at the last weeks of pregnancy, but she died in childbirth: the fetus was not yet prepared to move through the birth canal, according to research workers.

sections: Society, World News