Sat March 16, 2013 The Naming Of The Shrew It looks kinda like a
squirrel, except its ears are too small, its tail is ratty, then
bushy, and its mouth? Definitely un-squirrel. More like a shrew,
a fox, or a dog. And the teeth? Strange. What is it? It's an act
of edited, elegant imagination. Drawn by science illustrator
Carl Buell, working with 23 very learned, picky, choosy
scientists, it's the American Museum of Natural History Team's
best guess of what the Mother Of All Modern Mammals looked like.
After a giant asteroid smashed into Earth, wiping out the
dinosaurs, "a small, scampering, insect eating animal" poked its
head out from wherever it was hiding, and found itself suddenly
in a big, empty, inviting, dinosaur-less world. Free to roam,
eat and grow, it had lots and lots and lots of babies, who
eventually speciated into lots of different looking babies, and
66 million years later, one of those babies (great, great, great
etc. grandchild of the original) is ... you! You reading this.
That little animal