This ‘crazy beast’ is unlike any mammal we’ve ever seen
It might just look like a funky beaver, but this guy's skeleton is almost alien-like. (Andrey Atuchin/)The world is already full of zany animals, from giant murder hornets to freaky deep-sea creatures. But some of the organisms that wandered around Earth in the distant past look downright alien in comparison. A new study in the journal Nature highlights a particularly kooky-looking Cretaceous-era mammal, the remains of which spent years in storage buried beneath a hum-drum crocodile fossil.Adalatherium hui, which means “crazy beast” in a mix-up of Malagasy and Greek, roamed around Madagascar some 70 million years ago, and is a part of a relatively unknown group of mammals called gondwanatherians. This group of animals was named after their ancient homeland Gondwana, the lower half of the ancient continent Pangea, which once served as the one-and-only landmass on Earth.When the giant hunk of rock finally started to break apart some 180...