Found! The Newest (Old) Unbearably Cute Beardog

Artist rendering of a new pocket predator: a reclassified Chihuahua-sized beardog with teeth made for the munching and crunching of anything it could catch. Credit: Monica Jurik, The Field Museum. Last year, I had the pleasure (and it was a pleasure...a delight, actually) of digging through some of the off-exhibit collections at The Field Museum in Chicago. I was shadowing paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim, who was visiting the museum to take measurements of some of the many crocodilian specimens in its cavernous collection halls. We searched through row after row of cabinets and shelves loaded with orderly boxed and bagged, labeled and tagged skulls. Lights on timers sometimes flickered out in far corners of the halls, leaving us surrounded by shadow and toothy dead things. The collections are one of those places that are at once slightly creepy — especially when you turn a corner and come eye-to-eye with a large ...