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To: haqihana who wrote (95045)	1/13/2005 10:48:14 AM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793964

I have heard some horror stories about wolf crosses. You get a lot of people that imagine a wolf would make an incredible attack dog and they don't. They make a great guard dog because they don't wag their tail and people don't know what to make of a 150 pound hairy dog so they don't get our of their cars. The biggest danger is falling into one of the holes and trenches they dig constantly. They have some gruesome habits that are hard to get used to such as sleeping with their prey (usually cats) for a few days before eating.

To: haqihana who wrote (95045)	1/13/2005 11:01:19 AM
From: average joe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793964

I want one of these <g> When devil dogs ruled the world By Roger Highfield, Science Editor The discovery of two ancient "devils" has challenged the traditional view of our distant ancestors as rat-sized creatures that scurried around the feet of dinosaurs. Textbooks usually say that our ancestors were small, boring and nocturnal until an asteroid impact killed the "terrible lizards" around 65 million years ago. Two Repenomamus robustus devour a creature while R. giganticus, drawn from the fossil [below], hunt prey That view is now challenged after the discovery of two beautifully preserved fossils of related 130-million-year-old mammals. They were found preserved in rock composed of volcanic and former riverbed sediments in north-eastern China's Liaoning Province. Both bear some resemblance to the Tasmanian devil, a squat marsupial. The bigger one, a newly-found species, is the size and shape of a basset hound and is the largest known mammal discovered with fairly complete fossil remains from the Mesozoic era (280 to 65 million years ago). The major new find, Repenomamus giganticus, was more than a metre long, with a skull 50 per cent larger than that of the second species, R. robustus, say Yaoming Hu and Meng Jin, of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, and Wang Yuanqing of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing today in the journal Nature. These creatures were big enough to feast on young dinosaurs. Strikingly, the specimen of R. robustus found nearby contained in its stomach the limbs, fingers and teeth of a young Psittacosaurus, a two-legged, parrot-beaked herbivorous dinosaur. The mammals would have eaten a varied diet including plants as well as meat, Dr Hu's team says. Their teeth and jaws were probably strong enough to catch live prey. R. robustus had large, pointed incisors, canines, and premolars useful for catching, holding and ripping prey, further evidence that this group of primitive mammals ate meat as well as plants. Its robust jawbones and deep pits on nearby bones suggest that large muscles powered this mammal's jaws. But its molars were small and blunt. Although Repenomamus probably could not run fast, it could stand on its back legs and walk effectively enough to stalk small prey - as this new fossil of R. robustus indicates. "This evidence of larger size and predatory, carnivorous behaviour in early mammals is giving us a drastically new picture of many of the animals that lived in the age of dinosaurs," Dr Meng said. "These latest finds should trigger another avalanche of questions and speculation," said Dr Anne Weil, of Duke University, North Carolina. She said it added to growing evidence over the past decade or so that Mesozoic mammals could be bigger than previously thought. The new finds are exceptional because near-complete skeletons are preserved, allowing precise measurements to be made to estimate body weights of the animals. There is evidence from DNA studies of living creatures and fossils that mammals from this time, the Mesozoic, were diverse, with whole lineages that have not survived to the present day. Dr Weil said it was possible that even bigger mammals would be found that date from the time of the dinosaurs. telegraph.co.uk