So sorry about the wait.
I swear, I can’t get anything done these days…
That reminds me, there’s a Cretaceous-period egg-laying mammal named after the Cadbury chocolate company. I should tell you about it sometime
Really?! :blink: Tellz me about it!! I wantz to know!!
The mammal is called
Kryoryctes cadburyi: “
Kryoryctes” meaning “cold digger” because it lived in southern Australia about 105 million years ago, when Australia was much closer to the South Pole and therefore considerably colder, and because its upper arm bone (the only fossil so far discovered) shows similarities to that of its possible modern-day relative, the echidna, suggesting that it was adapted for digging. The other part of its name honors the Cadbury chocolate company; the reason for this is a long and very interesting story (You might want to have some chocolate with you while you’re reading this; I guarantee it’ll make you hungry for it
):
The fossil was uncovered during a dig at Dinosaur Cove in Victoria, Australia that lasted from 1984 to 1994. The students who participated in the dig claim that the food was terrible, and that they “lived on chocolate”. As motivation, the paleontologist in charge of the dig promised a kilogram (2.2 pounds) of chocolate to anyone who found a dinosaur jawbone (and for the record, at least one student did find one; according to the article she subsequently consumed the reward almost singlehandedly). Then the dig leader was asked what the reward would be if someone found a
mammal bone (Mesozoic mammals are exceptionally rare fossils, and at the time there no specimens known from Dinosaur Cove); thinking that would never happen, he said a cubic meter (roughly
one ton) of chocolate.
Well, eventually the dig was closed down, and the collected specimens shelved for eventual preparation and evaluation. When you have ten summers’ worth of collected fossils lying around waiting to be chipped out of the rock they’re preserved in and identified, it can take a long time to get to them all, so it wasn’t until years later that one particular fossil (tentatively identified as a turtle humerus) was prepared and examined closely. That was when they realized that the fossil was in fact a mammal humerus. Cue “Oh crap” reaction from otherwise ecstatic paleontologist when he realizes he has to make good on his promise (worth about ten thousand U.S. dollars). Fortuituously, however, he happened to have just the right connections: one of the dig volunteers was a science teacher who had taught the son of the manager of a local Cadbury chocolate factory, who agreed to provide the necessary chocolate. And since no one knew who had found the fossil, everyone who had participated in the Dinosaur Cove dig was invited to the Cadbury factory for a share of the prize. Actually, it’s impossible to make a one-ton slab of chocolate, because the center would never solidify. So instead the factory made a cubic meter of cocoa butter (the fatty component of chocolate); photos were taken, and then the dig team was let loose in a room full of chocolate bars. Everyone went home with boxes and boxes of chocolate, and as an expression of gratitude, the fossil mammal was named for the chocolate company.
Whew! I can’t believe it took me so long to write that (almost two hours)! :blink: Ehh…I gotta go get some chocolate now.
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