THIS year our furry ancestors came snarling out of the undergrowth, their teeth bared. Until now, mammals in the Cretaceous had been portrayed as shivering insectivores skulking in the shadows of the mighty dinosaurs. But no longer. It was payback time, and dinosaur was on the menu.
Our preconceptions were overturned by the discovery of two stunning mammal fossils. Repenomamus giganticus, at a metre long, the bigger of the two, had fearsome teeth similar to a modern Tasmanian devil and was big enough to hunt small dinosaurs. Even the smaller Repenomamus robustus was no timid shrew: the bones of…
