Stroll through any museum hall well-stocked with fossil mammals and it’s tempting to look at the extinct beasts as variations on familiar themes. There’s a sloth, but bigger. There’s a camel, but smaller. I guess that weirdo in the corner looks something like a pig. We shove the remains of the extinct into expectations of the familiar even if the fit isn’t particularly good. And that’s a shame. Fossil mammals were stranger than we often give them credit for, and they often behaved in ways that no modern animal does. Just look at Kolponomos.

In the wide spread of the mammal family tree, Kolponomos was a carnivoran. That’s the group that includes cats, seals, bears, civets, and the dog