A wildebeest-like creature that lived in Africa 70,000 years ago had a trumpet-shaped nasal passage, similar in shape to those of some dinosaurs.

Credit: Curr. Biol.

Rusingoryx atopocranion was previously known from incomplete specimens, but a team led by Haley O'Brien at Ohio University in Athens and Tyler Faith at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, have discovered six more-complete skulls on an island in Lake Victoria in Kenya (one of the skulls is pictured). X-ray scans revealed large, hollow nasal passages that extended out from the top of the animals' heads. Known as nasal domes, these have previously been seen only in some hadrosaurs that lived around 65 million years ago — a rare example of how similarities in behaviour and environment can spur the evolution of a common feature in distantly related animals.

Acoustic modelling suggested that the structures allowed R. atopocranion to vocalize at very low frequencies, possibly helping herds to communicate without alerting predators, the authors propose.

Curr. Biol. http://doi.org/bcdn (2016)