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Description
What a weird old thing this was! Barylambda was one of the first large mammals to evolve after the extinction of the dinosaurs. It lived 56-60 million years ago in the Paleocene, the oldest epoch of the 'age of mammals'. It was probably herbivorous although the males had sharp canine teeth. Barylambda had a heavy body with a thick tail and stout limbs but a surprisingly small head. It reached a total length of about 2.5m/8.5 ft and a weight of 650 kg/1400 lbs. Its construction with the stout tail and very strong hind legs have led some palaeontologists to conclude that it reared up to feed on high leaves, supporting itself with its hind legs and tail, like the much later giant ground sloths are also supposed to have done. Barylambda and its relatives, the pantodonts, went extinct without descendants.
Very speculative reconstruction (like most reconstructions of ancient things we don't have any counterparts of): though we have good skeletal remains, we don't know what colour it was, if it was hairy or not, what its ears or muzzle looked like, and so forth.
Very speculative reconstruction (like most reconstructions of ancient things we don't have any counterparts of): though we have good skeletal remains, we don't know what colour it was, if it was hairy or not, what its ears or muzzle looked like, and so forth.
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Comments32
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Now here's a real oddball that almost never gets mentioned in books or TV shows about prehistoric mammals.