Rare Florida fossil finally ends debate about how porcupine jaws and tails evolved

A porcupine fossil recovered in Florida was the key clue in solving a paleontological mystery. Jeff Gage/Florida Museum, CC BY-ND

A rare, nearly complete fossil of an extinct North American porcupine helped me and my colleagues solve a decades-long debate about how the modern North American porcupine evolved from its ancestors.

Published in Current Biology, our paper argues that North American porcupine ancestors may well date back 10 million years, but they wouldn’t be recognizable until about 8 million years later.