The ancestors of mammals looked like fat lizards with small heads and had a hippo-like lifestyle
Animals that lived before the dinosaurs looked like fat lizards with very small heads and had a semi-aquatic lifestyle like that of a hippopotamus, according to fossils recently unearthed in France. The amphibians, which represent a previously unknown genus and species of mammal ancestor, measure about 12 feet (4 meters) in length, the researchers report in the October issue of the journal. Palaeo Vertebrates , published online in July. They dub a new species Lalieudorhynchus gandi ; it lived about 265 million years ago in Pangea supercontinent, just before the era of the dinosaurs. The unusual animal fossil was first discovered in 2001 in the Lodève Basin in southern France, by study co-author and paleontologist Jörg Schneider, a professor in the Department of Paleontology and Stratigraphy at the University of Freiberg in Germany, and doctoral candidate Frank Körner. They found two large ribs, each measuring 24 inches (60 centimeters) long, in a rocky riverbed. During subsequent