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A Mammal The Size Of A Bug

The furry, gumdrop-size mammal may have climbed onto the tree stump to rest. Or its tiny body may have been plucked from the ground and carried to the stump by a bird. Somehow, 65 million years ago, a stump became the final resting place for tiny Batodonoides (ba-toe-doe- noy-deez), a newly discovered mammal that was the size of a cockroach.

Last week researchers from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor announced they had found a jawbone fossil of the shrewlike creature in a fossilized stump in Wyoming. Batodonoides weighed no more than a dollar bill. Its teeth were about the size of a grain of sand!

Jonathan Bloch, a researcher, was just plain confused by the fossil. "At first I thought I was looking at a fish jaw," he said. "Under the microscope, I realized I was looking at the smallest mammal teeth I had ever seen."

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