DARWIN'S TOXODON

Toxodon is an extinct large grazing mammal. The first Toxodon fossils were discovered by Charles Darwin on his visit to South America as part of his voyage on the HMS Beagle. 

Darwin wondered at the fossil's strange appearance as it seemed to share features with both rodents and rhinos. 

“Toxodon is perhaps one of the strangest animals ever discovered,” wrote Darwin. He first encountered the creature in Uruguay on November 26th, 1834. 

“Having heard of some giant’s bones at a neighbouring farm-house…, I rode there accompanied by my host, and purchased for the value of eighteen pence the head of the Toxodon.”

The beast’s skeleton, once fully assembled, was a baffling mish-mash of traits. It was huge like a rhino, but it had the chiselling incisors of a rodent—its name means “arched tooth”—and the high-placed eyes and nostrils of a manatee or some other aquatic mammal. “How wonderfully are the different orders, at present time so well separated, blended together in different points of the structure of the toxodon!”

Although Toxodon is not related to rodents, in 2015, it was discovered to be distantly related to rhinoceros. 

VELOCIRAPTOR VERSUS MAMMAL

The thrilling scene you see playing out before you is a velociraptor about to make a meal out of a little brown rodent. Run, little ancestor!

Velociraptors were smallish dinosaurs around 2 meters or 6 feet in length. Even so, this 45-kilogram or 100-pound carnivore was an impressive hunter.

They ran on two very speedy back legs to catch and dine on reptiles, amphibians, insects, small dinosaurs and mammals. 

Velociraptor is a genus of dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur. These adorable wee killers lived 75 to 71 million years ago during the latter part of the Cretaceous. Two species are currently recognized, although others have been assigned in the past. Velociraptors had large brains relative to their body size. They were likely not Einstein-level smart, but certainly smart enough to know you were likely hiding behind that rock. The Theory of Relativity had quite a different connotation in the Cretaceous. The charming artistic rendering you see here is by the very talented Daniel Eskridge.