236-Million-Year-Old Fossil Suggests Live Birth Evolved 95M Years Earlier Than Thought

Two hundred and thirty-six million years ago, in a world still scarred by catastrophic extinction, a creature called Chiniquodon theotonicus carried its young not in eggs but within its own body — a discovery written in bone and only now being read. A growth line etched into fossilized tissue has led paleontologists to conclude that live birth, long regarded as a hallmark of modern mammals, may have emerged nearly a hundred million years earlier than science had assumed. The finding does not merely adjust a date on a timeline; it invites us to reconsider how deeply the architecture of mammalia