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During the dinosaur age, most of the mammals were frail, usually weighing less than 450g. Recently, a bizarre fossil skull is discovered in Madagascar, which is relatively a giant weighing around 9kg.
David Krause of Stony Brook University in New York said, “It was a monster and looks like a big groundhog.”
The researchers believed that it’s the 2nd heaviest mammal known from the era, and the most massive of that time from the southern hemisphere.
Professor Krause said his best guess was it measured between 50cm and 60cm from nose to rump. It lived between 66 million and 72 million years ago.
In a study published in Nature journal, Professor Krause and colleagues have named it Vintana sertichi, perhaps an agile plant-eater with good eyesight in low light and a good sense of smell, handy to avoid predatory dinosaurs and other beasts that shared its environment.
“It would have been a fine hors d’oeuvre for a dinosaur,” Professor Krause said.
Rebecca McGhee
Rebecca McGhee is a valuable contributor for several publications and online platforms. Having graduates with a degree in Computer Science, her interest lies mostly in this area. Yet, she finds any tech-related topic or scientific topic is a challenge worth meeting. She enjoys turning her own research projects in worthy contributions that reach the large public. And mostly, she is grateful for all the feedback she receives from readers, as she believes it aids her in permanently improving her style of writing, beyond the scientific style she is accustomed to.
