It’s not just the nickname of that guy in your dorm

Published April 29, 2020

“Crazy beast” — or Adalatherium hui — is its name. It lived 50 million years ago amongst the dinosaurs, but it was a mammal … a really weird mammal whose home was where Madagascar is today. It looks like a badger, but one that got caught in a transporter accident: It had wide back legs like a reptile, walked with side-to-side motion, had long claws on its back feet and rodent-like teeth. And it was 100 times larger than other Mesozoic mammals.
“Its many uniquely bizarre features defied explanation in terms of relationships to other mammals. In this sense, it was a ‘crazy beast’.”