Posted on 10/05/2015 2:36:03 PM PDT by Red Badger
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The world had been wrecked. An asteroid impact in Mexico compounded by colossal volcanism in India 66 million years ago had killed about three-quarters of Earth's species including the dinosaurs.
But relatively soon afterward, a plucky critter that looked like a beaver was thriving, exemplifying the resilience of the mammals that would arise from the margins of the animal kingdom to become Earth's dominant land creatures.
Scientists on Monday announced the discovery in northwestern New Mexico's badlands of the fossil remains of Kimbetopsalis simmonsae, a plant-eating, rodent-like mammal boasting buck-toothed incisors like a beaver that lived just a few hundred thousand years after the mass extinction, a blink of the eye in geological time.
Kimbetopsalis, estimated at 3 feet long (1 meter), would have been covered in fur and possessed large molar teeth with rows of cusps used to grind down plants.
Asked what someone's impression of Kimbetopsalis might be, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science curator of paleontology Thomas Williamson said, "They would probably think something like, 'Hey, look at that little beaver! Why doesn’t it have a flat tail?"
It lived in a lush area of forests, rivers, streams and lakes as Earth's ecosystems began to recover from the catastrophe that ended the Cretaceous Period and opened the Paleocene Epoch.
(Excerpt) Read more at ca.news.yahoo.com ...
“Men sometimes make the strangest requests!”
Anyway, imagine what life would have been like for an actual boy having to grow up while being known to everyone as “The Beaver”. Especially his teen years.
Any lip readers out there?
In before Leslie Nielsen, and Priscilla Presley.
Why didn’t you bring them along?
“Post-apocalyptic ‘beaver’”
I may have seen one of those once, though I was very drunk at the time.
Did you think about chewing off your arm?
I know how to surf the net, but I’m not computer savy yet. I don’t know how to post pics.
Did you think about chewing off your arm?
Gnaw....
;>)
Discovered by explorer Henry Leavitt II. Or, the Leavitt-2 Beaver.
Gnaw....
;>)
LOL You’re right. It’s been a while. :)
Nature's prepper
Post-apocalyptic beaver threads never go out of style.
Thank you for that Denise Austin memory!
;^)
Beavers have Camel toes!..............................Who Knew!?!?!?!?.................
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