has been pinpointed!
"**The creature that gave rise to all the placental mammals - a huge group that includes whales, elephants, dogs, bats and us - has at last been pinpointed.
**
An international effort mapped out thousands of physical traits and genetic clues to trace the lineage. Their results indicate that all placental mammals arose from a small, furry, insect-eating animal.
Placental mammals - as opposed to the kind that lay eggs, such as the platypus, or carry young in pouches, such as the kangaroo - are an extraordinarily diverse group of animals with more than 5,000 species today. They include examples that fly, swim and run, and range in weight from a couple of grams to hundreds of tonnes.
A wealth of fossil evidence had pointed to the notion that the group, or clade, grew in an “explosion” of species shortly after the dinosaurs’ end about 65 million years ago."
Source : BBC News - Earliest placental mammal ancestor pinpointed
soooooooooo…are they saying that we all originated from this furry little rat/mouse like creature? as confused 
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