Oldest Alligator Relative Found After Dinosaur Extinction

A fossilized feather preserved in the dung of a large Cretaceous predator from Montana’s Hell Creek Formation may offer clues to why the bird lineage Neornithes survived the asteroid-driven mass extinction 66 million years ago. The coprolite also contained fish scales and bird remains, and its three-dimensional feather is described as the best preserved yet from the dinosaur era; the evidence suggests the prey may have been a flightless, fish-eating bird. Separately, paleontologists identified Mandrasuchus milleri, the oldest confirmed member of the alligator group, from Colorado fossils dating roughly 200,000 to 350,000 years after the extinction. The roughly two-meter-long predator was abundant in North America, likely lived in freshwater environments, and used a flexible diet, suggesting alligatorids recovered rapidly after the extinction.