Multimedia Gallery
Measuring fossilized porcupine skull
A student measures the fossilized skull of a 2 million-year-old North American porcupine. Researchers determined the skull belonged to an extinct species of porcupine that can likely trace its ancestry to before the Isthmus of Panama, a land strait connecting North and South America that formed around 5 million years ago.
[Research supported by U.S. National Science Foundation grants DBI 1756306 and DBI 1701714.]
Learn more in the Florida Museum of Natural History news story Florida fossil porcupine solves a prickly dilemma 10-million years in the making. (Date of image: Unknown; date originally posted to NSF Multimedia Gallery: June 14, 2024)
Credit: Jeff Gage/Florida Museum of Natural History
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