Fossils belonging to a hedgehog smaller than the average house mouse have been discovered at a fossil site in British Columbia.

Detailing their findings in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, a research team also unearthed a small tapir about half the size of its modern counterpart, Live Science reported.

The first two mammals found at the site, the tiny hedgehog and tapir help to complete a gap in history for the area.

"We know a lot about this time interval in Wyoming and Colorado. We know a bit about it in the high Arctic," said study researcher Jaelyn Eberle, the curator of fossil vertebrates at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, as quoted by Live Science. "But we know nothing about what was going on in between."

The fossils were uncovered by accident when scientists were hunting for plant fossils Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park. As study researcher David Greenwood of Brandon University in Manitoba and his colleagues were quarrying, a student discovered a tiny bone inside a rock.

"When they looked at it under a hand lens, they realized it was a fossil vertebrate," Eberle told Live Science.

Scientists have dated the fossils to between 50 million and 53 million years ago, a period known as the Eocene Epoch. At the time, British Columbia had a climate akin to Portland, Ore., researchers say.

"This is the height of global warming since the extinction of the dinosaurs, so it's the time interval that people look at a lot for trying to understand global warming today," Eberles said.

The newly discovered diminutive hedgehog was around 2 inches long with molars of only 0.04 inches. Because the teeth were so small, paleontologists elected to send the entire piece of rock to Penn State University for scans with high-resolution computed tomography instead of chipping away at the specimen. 

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