Ancestor of the elephant was the size of a bunny
The earliest known ancestor to big-eared dumbos have been discovered - and they're not the most imposing of creatures.
In fact, they're the size of a pet rabbit.
But forget their lack of stature, because the discovery reveals something more important than just where elephants came from.
According to National Geographic, the 60-million-year-old creature - called Eritherium azzouzorum and discovered in Morocco - shows these mammals were already thriving just six million years after the dinosaurs were wiped out.
Whatever the global catastrophe that cause the big lads to park it, rats, primates and now this mini-elephant were all happily going about their business not long after the big kaboom.
Paleontologists are now scouring the Earth to find more examples of early mammals in the hope of finding clues why nature decided it was our turn.
Weird Science Factoid: A group of kangaroos is called a mob. I know it's not science, but I loved this one!
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Daniel Smith - a long time ago, in a galaxy far away just north of Watford, Daniel fancied himself as a scientist but turned out to be the worst scientist since that bloke who mapped out all those canals on Mars that turned out to be scratches on his telescope's lens. Luckily, he is now not working on the Large Hadron Collider inadvertently creating a black hole that would swallow the world but is safely behind a desk writing this blog, bringing you the fantastical underbelly of nature... weird science.
