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[Radio Audio / News] Cape Breton fossils are the oldest evidence of parental behaviour

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from Quirks & Quarks with Bob McDonald (CBC) A 300 million year old animal was preserved huddled around a juvenile in a den in a hollow tree. Maddin’s team recently discovered an adult and juvenile fossils of a varanopid synapsid — one of the earliest animals on the mammalian evolutionary lineage — inside a lithified tree stump on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia. (Henry Sharpe) Click this link for Radio audio clip within article: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/quirks/jan-11-fires-in-australia-cuttlefish-watch-3d-movies-coal-pollution-harms-crops-and-more-1.5418816/cape-breton-fossils-are-the-oldest-evidence-of-parental-behaviour-1.5418828 More than 300 million years ago, a lizard-like creature more closely related to mammals than reptiles died in what is now Cape Breton, N.S. with its tail curled around what was likely its offspring. The team of Canadian researchers who found and analyzed the fossil think this is the earliest evidence of parenting behaviour yet identifi