Murray McClung, age l1, of Victoria, B. C:, for his question:

What was the first mammal like?

The mammal story begins when the Rockies were half grown and a stretch of new land was rising from the sea to join North and South America. About half of North America was under swampy water and the Age of the Reptiles was coming to an end. There were still many monstrous dinosaurs in the swamps and other giants thundered over the dry ground. Other reptiles had taken to the air on leathery wings to become the ancestors of the first birds. The world of 60 million years ago was warm and damp and almost all the animals were dinosaurs,

The ancestors of the first mammals were also dinosaurs, perhaps somewhat like the lizards of today. These lizard ancestors changed and developed in several stages before they were like the mammals of today. For, like all reptiles, they were scaly coated, cold blooded animals. What's more, they hatched from eggs. In fact, until the mammals developed, all living animals in the world hatched from eggs.

There are some animals living in the world today which seem to be part reptile and part mammal. They give us a clue as to what the early mammals may have been like and how they developed. The duckbill platypus of Australia is such an animal. He has a. leathery beak, a fur coat and he hatches from a round, soft shell reptile type egg. After birth, hoe feeds for a while on mother's milk, Though somewhat like a reptile, thin fact definitely classes him as a mammal.

Perhaps the first mammal also hatched from a reptile type egg and later fed on mother's milk, It may have taken a longtime to progress to the stage where the babies were born alive, So far as we know, there were fully developed mammals some 50 million years ago.

Most likely, the first mammal was somewhat like the modern shrew, a sharp nosed ratty little fellow. He was almost certainly a burrower, for he had to stay hidden in a world where most of the animals were so much bigger. He must have been quick footed, for he had to dodge the clumsy dinosaurs. He may have fed largely on insects, like the modern shrews and moles. Like them, he was probably a nervous, high strung little fella with an enormous appetite. He was a warm blooded animal and he wore a rather bristly fur coat, though his long tail may have been bare.

These things set the first mammal apart from all the other animals in the world of 50 million years ago. But one difference was even more important. For his size, the mammal had more brain than any other creature. In his day, he was the smartest animal in the world. Later, he was smart enough to adapt to the new conditions in the world, when all the big, strong, stodgy dinosaurs perished because they could not keep up with the changing times,