Small but remarkable fossils found in New Zealand will prompt a major rewrite of prehistory textbooks, showing for the first time that the so-called "land of birds" was once home to mammals as well.
The tiny fossilised bones - part of a jaw and hip - belonged to a unique, mouse-sized land animal unlike any other mammal known and were unearthed from the rich St Bathans fossil bed, in the Otago region of South Island.
But the real shock to scientists was that the bones were there at all: until now, decades of searching had shown no hint that the furry, warm-blooded animals that thrived and prospered so widely in other lands had ever trodden on New Zealand soil.
The research, undertaken by an international team led by Trevor Worthy, of the University of Adelaide, Alan Tennyson, of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and Mike Archer, of the University of New South Wales, has been published in the journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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