Back in Eocene times, about 40 million years ago, Kerberos was the biggest carnivore to stalk Europe. Based on relationships between tooth and skull size and body mass, Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences paleontologist Floréal Solé and colleagues have estimated that the predator would have weighed over 300 pounds. That’s not the record breaker, but, being in the lower range of what female grizzly bears weigh, the mammal still had a lot of heft. The handful of postcrania seem to support this. It seems as if Kerberos was plantigrade, or walked with a flat foot like a bear rather than on its tippy-toes like a cat.

But the carnivore’s size wasn’t the only reason you wouldn’t want to