Yep, I’d say that’s a mammal alright.

Anyone who has read my novel Glog , or about my bird watching activities in this blog, knows that natural history interests me.

Since I was a Boy Scout, I’ve found fossils fascinating. Our troop used to go to an abandoned phosphate quarry and collect the huge teeth of Carchadrodon Megalodon, the giant shark that used to haunt Florida when the whole state was underwater

And I once spent a happy vacation with a group doing an underwater survey of fossil and Indian remains in a Florida spring.

And I have prowled the Calvert Cliffs fossil bed where Glog found his baculum and explored caves looking for fossils deep underground.

Yes, I’ve always been interested in fossils, so I often read about new discoveries in paleontology whenever I see a news item about them.

Friday, scientists announced they have uncovered a fossil mammal which they say is older than any previously found.

I understand that newspaper editors do not always pay attention to what they are doing, but some mistakes should ring a bell with a proofreader shoewhere.…

Am I the only one to think this news report on fossils is hilarious?

Here is a verbatim copy, including graphic, from this morning's South Coast Today, Standard Times newspaper:

New fossil overturns previous ideas of Jurassic mammals

The discovery of a furry, beaver-like animal that lived at the time of dinosaurs has overturned more than a century of scientific thinking about Jurassic mammals.
The find shows that the ecological role of mammals in the time of dinosaurs was far greater than previously thought, said Zhe-Xi Luo, curator of vertebrate paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh.
The animal is the earliest swimming mammal to have been found and was the most primitive mammal to be preserved with fur, which is important to helping keep a constant body temperature, Luo said in a telephone interview.
For over a century, the stereotype of mammals living in that era has been of tiny, shrew-like creatures scurrying about in the underbrush trying to avoid the giant creatures that dominated the planet, Luo commented.
Now, a research team that included Luo has found that 164 million years ago, the newly discovered mammal with a flat, scaly tail like a beaver, vertebra like an otter and teeth like a seal was swimming in lakes and eating fish.
The team, led by Qiang Ji of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing, discovered the remains in the Inner Mongolia region of China.
They report their findings in today's issue of the journal Science.
Matthew Carrano, curator of dinosaurs at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, called the find "a big deal."