Some beasts catch you by surprise. I’m not talking about ambush predators – though such a statement would hold true – but rather prehistoric mammals whose very existence comes as something of a shock. The latest to make me go “What the hell?” is an enormous weasel that used to prowl western North America.

Paleontologist William Diller Matthew named carnivore Megalictis ferox way back in 1907. The mammal’s teeth and osteology clearly showed it to be a cousin of martens and stoats, yet their dimensions “indicate an animal which may best be described as a gigantic wolverene [sic], equaling a jaguar or a black bear in size.” And given that cats were meek little things at the time Megalictis lived, paleontologists