Dinosaurs are great. Don’t get me wrong. But just as their bulk literally cast shade on many of their prehistoric neighbors, they continue to overshadow their Mesozoic contemporaries in our imaginations. Our ancestors and cousins are a perfect example. The popular image of a mammal in the time of the dinosaurs is of a shrew-like furball scurrying through the night in search of insects, waiting for the giant reptilian monsters to disappear so that the Age of Mammals can begin.

But the real story of Mesozoic mammals doesn’t fit the dominant dinosaur trope. Yes, they were small, but they were not all itty bitty insectivores. Starting in the Late Triassic,