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  • OUTLOOK

The eyes of mammals reveal a dark past

A popular hypothesis suggests that the mammalian eye developed in the shadow of the dinosaurs.
  1. Emily Sohn

    1. Emily Sohn is a freelance journalist in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

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Artist's impression of the early mammal-like animal Kayentatherium

Kayentatherium (centre), an early mammal-like animal, lived in the shadow of dinosaurs such as Dilophosaurus during the early Jurassic, a period that occurred 201 million–174 million years ago. Credit: Mark Witton

For more than 100 million years, dinosaurs dominated the daylight hours, with warmth from the Sun enabling them to thrive. The night, therefore, might have provided small, mostly insect-eating mammals with the best opportunity to hunt without becoming a dinosaur’s next meal.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01109-6

This article is part of Nature Outlook: The eye, an editorially independent supplement.

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