Lions and tigers and bears, oh my. These are some of the most imposing predators to stalk the land, not to mention the dark corners of our imagination. But these beasts didn’t always rule. They’re part of a relatively recent reign – that of the Carnivora – that out-competed other mammalian lines that had been chasing down prey for tens of millions of years. Among these now-lost predators were long-faced mammals with self-sharpening teeth – the creodonts.

After the non-avian dinosaurs kicked it about 66 million years ago, mammals flourished. The creodonts were among the first to take up a predatory lifestyle. The earliest are known from the Paleocene – the first epoch in the Age of