'Jurassic beaver' turns theory on its tail
Thursday, February 23, 2006; Posted: 2:09 p.m. EST (19:09 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For years the mammals living in the era of dinosaurs have been thought of as tiny shrew-like creatures scurrying through the underbrush. Now the discovery of a furry aquatic creature with seal-like teeth and a flat tail like a beaver has demolished that image.

Some 164 million years ago the newly discovered mammal was swimming in lakes in what is now northern China, eating fish and living with dinosaurs.

"Its lifestyle was probably very similar to the modern day platypus," Zhe-Xi Luo, curator of vertebrate paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, said in a statement. "It probably lived along river or lake banks. It doggy-paddled around, ate aquatic animals and insects, and burrowed tunnels for its nest."

Luo was part of a team led by Qiang Ji of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing that discovered the remains in the Inner Mongolia region of China. They report their findings in Friday's issue of the journal Science.

Read the rest here. (http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Music/02/23/music.solomonburke.ap/index.html)

Interesting, I thought you were writting about the giant beaver of the past it was the size of a bear.

Ooops! My mistake. I thought you were talking about very old prostitutes.