Deep in time, in the unimaginably diverse Tropical Rainforests that covered the world, a world bursting with life in the wake of the extinction of the Dinosaurs, strange creatures were evolving almost beyond belief.  One of these was Coryphodon.
     Built like a hippo or hornless rhino with short, strong legs and a wide body, eating leaves and weighing perhaps half a ton at seven and a half feet long, she was one of the first giant mammals, though not the first, in an era where large mammals were emerging from an immense diversity of Rainforest creatures.
     Giant snakes and especially crocodiles thrived.
     According to Wikipedia, Coryphodon was slow, with little in the way of defenses since most known predators seem to have been significantly smaller.

     Was it really?
          I wonder.

     Certainly there were crocodiles, and I would imagine some got fairly big, since elsewhere in the world lived the largest snake ever, Titanaboa, to the south in South America.

     Looking at the skeleton pictured in Wikipedia, Coryphodon had short, fairly strong, fairly widely spaced legs, a solid, strong head and a strong neck- I imagine it would have been very hard for a crocodile to drag into the water.

     Might she be adapted to resisting attack from crocodiles?

     A fantastic animal from a fantastic era- the Paleocene/Eocene, all thirty million years of it, and just starting to blossom when Coryphodon came along.  What a world we live in!

          David S. Annderson

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