Saint Bathans mammal
| "Saint Bathans mammal" Temporal range: Miocene, 19–15 Ma |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Subclass: | Theriiformes |
| Species: | †Saint Bathans Mammal |
| Binomial name | |
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Saint Bathans mammal |
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The Saint Bathans mammal is a currently unnamed extinct mammal from the Miocene of New Zealand. A notable member of the Saint Bathans Fauna, it is notable for being a late surviving "archaic" mammal species, neither a placental or marsupial, as well as for providing evidence that terrestrial mammals did in fact once live in Zealandia, in contrast with modern New Zealand, where bats are the only mammals in otherwise bird-dominated terrestrial faunas.
The Saint Bathans mammal is currently represented by two specimens, MNZ S.40958 and MNZ S.42214, composed of a lower jaw fragment and a femur respectively. It was part of an assemblage of fossils recovered in Saint Bathans in 1978, in what would later be understood to be the Bannockburn Formation, and first described in 2006.
Like most small mammal fossils, the Saint Bathans mammal material is rather incomplete, with only a lower jaw fragment and femur being known.
The lower jaw is edentulous, though the presence of deep tooth sockets suggests that it was toothed in life and that the teeth were lost post-mortem. It bears a long fused symphysis, an evidently procumbent lower incisor, and five additional sockets that imply a dental formula of one incisor, one canine and two double-rooted premolars.
The femur possesses a round head and poorly defined neck, orientated slightly dorsomedially with respect to the long axis of the shaft, and separated from the greater trochanter by a marked trough. The alignment of the femur in life is hard to ascertain, but it is thought that the animal had a semi-sprawling stance, more abducted than in therian mammals but nowhere near as much as in monotremes.
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