Chalicotheres, a strange creature distantly related to rhinos, horses and tapirs. An earlier knuckle walking Chalicothere on the left, which died out just before the Pleistocene began. Our Twilight Beast, Ancylotherium hennigi, the last of the great Chalicotheres. (Art by Tabitha Paterson)
Twilight beasts come in all shapes and sizes, with some being more familiar, like the sabretooth cat, Smilodon, and others less so, like the strange mini-sheep, Myotragus. Although we have some fossils, there are still a lot of awesome things to learn about many extinct animals. After almost 200 years from the discovery of the first member of a very bizarre group of creatures, little is still known about them even today. This beast isn’t an iconic mammal, but it should be; it was one of the last of its kind, and also witnessed the origins of our own species.
Tracing its beginnings back to…
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