2008 Woodie Awards
Anatomy professor helps in discovery of oldest known
Issue date: 3/27/08
Hopkins anatomy professor Kenneth Rose played an instrumental role in the discovery of the oldest known rabbit bones.
While on a fossil-hunting expedition several years ago in India, Rose and his team unearthed then-unidentified foot bones.
It was not until years later that Rose realized the resemblance between these bones and modern jack rabbit anatomy.
Previous research suggested that rabbits diverged from a lagomorph called the pika about 35 million years ago.
This finding was overturned when the Indian bones, which are dated at about 53 million years old, were then compared with 48-million year-old Chinese rabbit fossils that had previously gone unreported.
Rose's team also found that although the Indian fossils do resemble pikas, the bones are more similar to those of rabbits because they exhibit specialized features.
The bones also highly resemble ankle and foot bones of modern-day jack rabbits.
Rose, a professor in the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at the School of Medicine, and his team published the results of their study online in Proceedings of the Royal Society.
While on a fossil-hunting expedition several years ago in India, Rose and his team unearthed then-unidentified foot bones.
It was not until years later that Rose realized the resemblance between these bones and modern jack rabbit anatomy.
Previous research suggested that rabbits diverged from a lagomorph called the pika about 35 million years ago.
This finding was overturned when the Indian bones, which are dated at about 53 million years old, were then compared with 48-million year-old Chinese rabbit fossils that had previously gone unreported.
Rose's team also found that although the Indian fossils do resemble pikas, the bones are more similar to those of rabbits because they exhibit specialized features.
The bones also highly resemble ankle and foot bones of modern-day jack rabbits.
Rose, a professor in the Center for Functional Anatomy and Evolution at the School of Medicine, and his team published the results of their study online in Proceedings of the Royal Society.
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