Rare fossilized footprints discovered in diamond mine

Don’t you just hate it when you’re mining for diamonds but you keep finding rare fossils instead? That’s been the case in the Catoca mine in Angola, which has produced tracks from prehistoric dinos, crocs, and mammals recently. The mammal tracks are particularly interesting to researchers because of their size. The footprints appear to be left by an animal about the size of a modern-day raccoon. This might seem small to us, but in the Early Cretaceous period the critter would’ve been a veritable giant compared with other mammals, LiveScience reports. A similar-sized mammal from the same approximate period has previously been found in China, but it’s impossible to compare the two because the Chinese fossils are missing their hands and feet.