Sometime in the distant, distant past, an animal like my dog Blackie apparently ate some other animals like the chickens we used to keep in the backyard, and it was good.

Proof comes in the form of some fossils from China, which indicate that our common attitude of the mammal-dinosaur relationship (mouse-like things hiding in the nooks and crannies of the dinosaur world) needs some major revision.

Apparently, Liaoning back then was heavily volcanic. The animals in the area went to sleep one night, poisonous gas from nearby volcanoes washed over them, and they never woke up. In time the ash covered them, which eventually became a layer of sandstone filled with the most amazing finds -- feathered dinosaurs, early birds, fish and mammals.

Repenomamus gigantus weighed 30 pounds, or 13 kg, and we know it ate dinos because some undigested psittacosaurs were found where the stomach on a modern mammal would be, on the lower left side.

Somehow this explains Blackie's fondness for chicken kibble.

Oh, and there's no truth to the rumor that Blackie was named for "Blackie" Blankenhorn, the inspiration for a saloon-keeper played by Clark Gable in the movie San Francisco." We didn't even know about him, then. (Although now that you mention it I do see the resemblance.)