10 Weirdest Extinct Creatures

6. Leptictidium

A leptictidium doesn't have any overtly strange features when you examine it piece-by-piece but it's when you look at the whole ensemble that you realise how odd it is. The tail and feet are much like a rat's, the head is pretty shrew-ish and the torso wouldn't look out of place if you superimposed it onto Bambi. But when all of that is thrown together into a single animal and then it starts hopping along like a kangaroo rather than scurrying around like a rodent, you have to start questioning whether the term "intelligent design" needs a change of adjective. Still, looking a bit silly is a fair exchange for being well-adapted to one's environment. Living in a world where giant carnivorous birds sat at the top of the food chain and would love to take a bite out of the metre long critter, leptictidium was able to blend into its surroundings, move quickly to evade predators and live off a varied omnivorous diet. Fossils have been found with their stomach content intact and it appears that they often dined on insects, small lizards and even other mammals. So, despite looking like a walking (or hopping) jumble sale of body parts, leptictidium had everything it needed to get by in the world and even managed to survive what the dinosaurs could not. Good on you, shrewface.