https://www.livescience.com/paleocene-mammal-fossil-beorn-hobbit

ByBrandon Specktor-Senior Writerabout 13 hours ago

Meet Beornus honeyi — but you can call him Beorn.

Left to right, Conacodon hettingeri, Miniconus jeanninae, and Beornus honeyi.(Image credit: Banana Art Studio)

Early on their quest to reach the Lonely Mountain in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” (1937), Bilbo Baggins and company cross paths with an enormous, shape-shifting warrior named Beorn.

“Sometimes he is a huge black bear,” the wizard Gandalf says of the man, “sometimes he is a great strong black-haired man with huge arms and a great beard.”

In either form, Beorn is a giant among his peers. And now, paleontologists have immortalized the shaggy, axe-wielding brute with the discovery of an extinct mammal that rose to prominence in thePaleocene epoch(65 million to 23 million years ago), shortly after the death of thedinosaurs. They call this furry, puffy-cheeked creatureBeornus honeyi.

“I have…