The atomic number 8 - depleted lake that has create one of the smashing hoarded wealth troves of ancient animate being specimen has released one more : an exceptionally well - preserved sawhorse ascendant that was pregnant with a foal . The find include only the second scientifically recorded fossilized placenta .
Eurohippus messelensiswas just the size of a fox , but its descendants rise to be the mighty horses of today , with a picayune help fromselective reproduction over the five thousand year . The species was name for the Messel crude oil shale in which arich varietyofanimalswere swallow up between 57 and 36 million eld ago .
In 2000 , an almost completeE. messelenisskeleton was bump in those shales at a level laid down 47 million years ago , but it is only now that the value of the discovery has become clear . Along with the mother gymnastic horse , the shale pit preserved the bones of a fetus . “ Almost all of the bone of the fetus are still articulated in their original position . Only the skull is crushed , " said Dr. Jens Lorenz Franzen of the Senckenberg Research Institute .
Even more unco , micro ten - raysof the specimen has revealed part of the uterine tissue and what is known as the “ broad ligament , ” a structure that in innovative horses put up the fetus by linking the uterus to the female parent ’s gumption . The foetus had fully developed tooth , indicating it was almost quick to be bear , but had not yet turned into the birthing position . This is the first evidence that ancient horses gave birth in the same mode their much larger posterity do .
The saving is a result of the same conditions that killed the unfortunate mare and the many other animals at what was then Lake Messel . The area at the sentence was volcanic , and gasses overcame animals that ventured to the water to wassail . The bottom of the lake had no oxygen , so the bacterium that decomposed the soft tissue were anaerobic and precipitated atomic number 26 from the lake water , leaving a metallic trace of the shape of some of the tissues . Even the outline of the mare ’s last meal can be made out .
Franzen demonstrate his body of work to the2014 annual meetingof the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology . He toldLive Sciencethe saving is so remarkable he can see , “ gratuity of hairs of the outer ears — even the interior , like blood vessel , become visible in some cases . "
