After 18 million years, a new species of extinct rodent discovered in Israel

A handful of tiny teeth found in Israel's Negev desert led an international team of researchers to describe a new species of rodent which has been extinct for nearly 18 million years.

The discovery of Sayimys negevensis sheds new light on the likely dispersal route of mammals and other species between Eurasia and Africa in the Early Miocene (23 million to 16 million years ago) and highlights Israel's special paleogeographic position as the lynch-pin of the Levantine corridor connecting Eurasia with North Africa.
The research, published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, described a distant forerunner of the present-day gundi -- a small rodent with a comb-like bristles on the two middle toes of its hind feet, also known as 'comb-rat'.
"It is a pivotal species that bridges the gap between an array of primitive ctenodactylines and the most derived, Early Miocene and later, gundis," researchers said in their article.
Gundis are the last descendants of the family Ctenodactylidae whose earliest ancestors appeared in Asia about 40 million years ago. They experienced their greatest diversification and widest distribution, from Far East to Africa, in Miocene time. Nowadays, they live in groups on rocky outcrops in deserts and semi-deserts of East and North Africaread more