Colorado 'swamp dweller' mammal

Working near Rangely, Colorado, paleontologists have uncovered an unknown state resident—a fossil mammal about the size of a muskrat that may have scurried through swamps during the Age of Dinosaurs.

They identified the creature from a piece of jawbone and 3 molar teeth, and named it Heleocola piceanus. It lived in Colorado roughly 70 to 75 million years ago, at a time when an inland sea covered large portions of the American West. “Heleocola” roughly translates to “swamp dweller” in Latin.

Said one team member, “Colorado is a great place to find fossils, but mammals from this time period tend to be pretty rare. So it’s really neat to see this slice of time preserved in Colorado.”

Compared to the much larger dinosaurs living at the time, like tyrannosaurs or horned ancestors of Triceratops, this new fossil might seem tiny and insignificant. But it was surprisingly large for mammals at the time.

This discovery helps paint a more complete picture of a Colorado that would be all but unrecognizable to residents today. Seventy million years ago, this area was where land met water. Creatures like turtles, duck-billed dinosaurs and giant crocodiles may have flourished in marshes and estuaries, gorging themselves on wetland vegetation and fish.

The bit of mammal jaw emerged from a slab of sandstone that was collected from the site in 2016. The fossil measured about an inch long.

Before an asteroid killed off the non-avian dinosaurs 66 million years ago, mammals tended to be small—about the size of today’s mice or rats. They are largely identified from the tiny teeth they left behind.

In comparison, this one was positively huge. A cousin to modern-day marsupials, this animal weighed 2 pounds or more. But it’s not quite a record. The Didelphodon, another fossil mammal from the same period, may have weighed as much as 11 pounds. H. piceanus’ teeth indicate it dined on plants, with a few insects or small animals mixed in.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/paleontologists-discover-colorado-swamp-dweller-mammal-that-lived-alongside-dinosaurs/ar-AA1sNCLe?ocid=hpmsn&cvid=ed46623d933043f19069e3bf9a8f9350&ei=83 

Review of a Sweet Potato Pie

I decided to try something new this week; review a food item. I don’t normally do this. I normally just eat and make a mental note whether I would eat it again or not. But this was my first Sweet Potato Pie we had this holiday season, and I thought I would try my hand at reviewing it.

I didn’t grow up with sweet potato pie being offered at the holiday table. We had sweet potatoes. They were cooked, mashed with brown sugar and thrown in the oven with a layer of marshmallows on top. Sort of a sweet potato casserole, I guess. And I loved that, but once I became diabetic, I had to give that up.

This year, we stopped at a store we don’t often shop at to look for a dessert, because I’d forgotten to pick up dessert at our regular store. And they had plenty of pies to choose from; blueberry, peach, apple, cherry, sweet potato and pumpkin. I was trying to decide between the fruit pies (I’m not a big fan of pumpkin pie), when my husband suggested a sweet potato pie. He always says I never try anything new, so it surprised him when I agreed. He snatched up a sweet potato pie and headed for the register.

When the time came for dessert on Christmas Day, I took a closer look at that sweet potato pie. It looked a lot like a pumpkin pie, only yellow, not orange. And I didn’t see any little specks of spice in it, like you sometimes see in a pumpkin pie. I cut it into pieces and served it with some whipped cream.

The crust was not really flaky, just a layer of flour crust. The whipped cream was typical, sweet and creamy foam. The filling was creamy, like the filling of a pumpkin pie, but it tasted like sweet potatoes. Like a baked sweet potato, not with the brown sugar and marshmallow sweetness of my childhood sweet potato casserole. So I ate it, but I thought it could have used some cinnamon or pumpkin pie spice, even though that would make it more like the pumpkin pie I’m not that fond of.

Would I eat it again? Probably. If it was a choice between it or pumpkin pie. Or mincemeat pie. But I’m in no hurry to learn how to make it.