UK student discovers 145 million-year-old ‘rat’ teeth

A student at a British university has uncovered teeth from rat-like creatures who lived 145 million years ago and have distant links to humans, a scientific journal reports.

The discovery was made on the coast of Dorset, southwest England, by undergraduate Grant Smith as he sifted through rocks at the University of Portsmouth.

“Quite unexpectedly he found not one but two quite remarkable teeth of a type never before seen from rocks of this age,” says Steve Sweetman, a research fellow at the university.

“I was asked to look at them and give an opinion and even at first glance my jaw dropped!” he writes in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.

The teeth are believed to have belonged to two different species of small, furry creatures which were probably nocturnal and survived on insects and perhaps plants.

The two species have been named Durlstodon ensomi and Durlstotherium newmani, the latter after a local pub landlord, Charlie Newman.

— AFP