Rugosodon, earliest multituberculate mammal from Jurassic of China

A new paper in Science, describing Rugosodon. The Supplementary Materials are free.

Chong-Xi Yuan, Qiang Ji, Qing-Jin Meng, Alan R. Tabrum & Zhe-Xi Luo
(2013) Earliest Evolution of Multituberculate Mammals Revealed by a
New Jurassic Fossil Science 341 (6147): 779-783
DOI: 10.1126/science.1237970
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6147/779

Multituberculates were successful herbivorous mammals and were more diverse and numerically abundant than any other mammal groups in Mesozoic ecosystems. The clade also developed diverse locomotor adaptations in the Cretaceous and Paleogene. We report a new fossil skeleton from the Late Jurassic of China that belongs to the basalmost multituberculate family. Dental features of this new Jurassic multituberculate show omnivorous adaptation, and its well-preserved skeleton sheds light on ancestral skeletal features of all multituberculates, especially the highly mobile joints of the ankle, crucial for later evolutionary success of multituberculates in the Cretaceous and Paleogene.

Lots of news stories:

http://www.nature.com/news/fossil-reveals-features-of-mammal-line-that-outlived-dinosaurs-1.13568

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/08/130815-multituberculate-rugosodon-early-mammal-evolution/

http://www.livescience.com/38924-ancient-rodentlike-creature-discovered.html