Imagine yourself by a stream in Shuitangba, China, 6 million years ago. The birds are singing, the Sun is shining, and you’ve just woken up to find a wolf-sized otter sniffing your toes. That impressive beast is Siamogale melilutra , and it’s the largest known carnivore in its ecosystem. The rest of this article is behind a paywall. Please sign in or subscribe to access the full content.

These otters were humungous. Comparative in size to a wolf, they were also top predators and lived alongside beavers, elephants, tapirs, and waterbirds. As for what they were eating and how they hunted? It’s a good question, one that a team of scientists recently set out to answer.

S. melilutra was first described back in 2017 after a complete cranium, mandible, and some teeth were found, drasti

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