'Crazy beast' fossil discovered in Madagascar

[Still Waters]

The first near-complete skeleton of a bizarre mammal that lived on the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana has been discovered in Madagascar, scientists announced in a study published Wednesday. 

The 66-million-year-old, opossum-size fossil represents a new species, which the study authors have named "Adalatherium hui," from a Malagasy word meaning “crazy” and the Greek word for “beast”. 

The skeleton is the most complete for any Mesozoic mammal yet discovered in the Southern Hemisphere. The mammal's relatively large size is an oddball for its era, scientists say, since most at that time were about the size of a mouse.

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/04/29/fossil-adalatherium-hui-crazy-beast-discovered-madagascar/3044412001/

[Jon the frog]

A big booty beast, so many undiscovered critters !

[hetrodoxly]

 "capable of running and potentially even had other forms of locomotion" 

Like what, motorbike, rollerskates, i see no wings.

[Wepwawet]

It looks quite primitive with it's legs splayed out like that, almost like a cynodont from the Permian, yet is from the end of the Cretaceous. I think it also shows just how lucky were are to be here, for if not for that asteroid, I doubt mammals would have ever surpased dinosaurs. This criitter compares very unfavourably to a maniraptor, and a lot of mammals still do, so lucky for us birds never evolved thumbs.

[Still Waters]

Update:

New research published today in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology describes a bizarre 66 million-year-old mammal that provides profound new insights into the evolutionary history of mammals from the southern supercontinent Gondwana—recognized today as Africa, South America, Australia, Antarctica, the Indian subcontinent, and the Arabian Peninsula.

https://phys.org/news/2020-12-crazy-beast-dinosaurs.html

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2020.1805455