Eomaia ("dawn mother") is a genus of extinct fossil mammals containing the single species Eomaia scansoria, discovered in rocks that were found in the Yixian Formation, Liaoning Province, China, and dated to the Barremian Age of the Lower Cretaceous about . The single fossil specimen of this species is in length and virtually complete. An estimate of the body weight is . It is exceptionally well-preserved for a 125-million-year-old specimen. Although the fossil's skull is squashed flat, its teeth, tiny foot bones, cartilages and even its fur are visible. and the docodont Castorocauda, discovered in rocks dated to about , also have traces of fur.
Eomaia scansoria possessed several features in common with placental mammals that distinguish them from metatherians, the group that includes modern marsupials. These include an enlarged malleolus ("little hammer") at the bottom of the tibia (the larger of the two shin bones),
Eomaia, like other early mammals and living marsupials, had a narrow pelvic outlet suggesting small undeveloped neonates requiring extensive nurturing.
Epipubic bones extend forwards from the pelvis; This stiffening would be harmful in pregnant placentals, whose abdomens need to expand.
Classification
thumb|Fossil cast
The discoverers of Eomaia claimed that, on the basis of 268 characters sampled from all major Mesozoic mammal clades and principal eutherian families of the Cretaceous, Eomaia could be placed at the root of the eutherian "family tree" along with Murtoilestes and Prokennalestes.
The study, which examined 4541 anatomical characters of 86 mammal species (including Eomaia scansoria), found "100% jackknife support that Eomaia falls outside of Eutheria as a stem taxon to Theria", and so could not be considered a placental or a eutherian as previously hypothesized.), and in all trees published in that paper Eomaia fell outside Theria (i.e., debates about the findings of O'Leary et al. have not centered on the position of Eomaia). Meng (2014), who was a co-author on the O'Leary et al. (2013) paper, subsequently referred to Eomaia as a Eutherian but provided no analysis to support this claim. Gheerbrant et al. 2014 mentioned Eomaia in a list of Cretaceous taxa that represented "the primitive eutherian condition" but provided no analytical evidence for this claim; a similar claim was repeated by Sole et al. (2014) again without analytical support.
A 2023 cladistical study again recovered Eomaia as a basal eutherian.
See also
- Evolution of mammals
- Juramaia ()
- The World After Dinosaurs
- Sinodelphys