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A well-preserved fossil of Tamirkhan balcarceli from Mongolia's Gobi Desert has overturned a nearly 40-year-old scientific assumption that zhelestids were early relatives of modern placental mammals. The rabbit-like Cretaceous creature instead belongs to a separate, previously unrecognized mammalian lineage. The discovery reshapes understanding of early mammal evolution and highlights the risk of misclassifying species based on dental features alone.