Picture this a moment, if you will, please. You leave your house to take a walk. You turn the corner and suddenly come face to face with a huge, extremely vicious, beast straight out of a John Carpenter movie. It is about ten feet long with a head around two and a half feet long and resembling that of a dog or a lion except that the eyes are on the side of the head like a lizard. Those 4 inch long saber toothed fangs, however, are very much like that of a lion. The body is like a lizard and covered with scales.

Right now you are probably wondering what piece of mythology or what movie this creature is from. Here is your surprise. This strange combination of mammal and reptile featured animal actually did walk the earth. Scientists searching in the Karoo region of South Africa have recently uncovered the first complete fossil of this creature ever to be unearthed.

Affectionately named gorgonopsid and called Gorgon after the terrifying creatures of ancient mythology, this creature is known from earlier finds of skulls and bone fragments to have lived well before the dinosaurs. One of the most vicious predators to ever live, they became extinct about 250 million years ago along with almost 90 percent of all species on earth during the Permo-Triassic mass extinction.

These strange creatures are a member of the Therapsida family and are thought to have been the predecessors of mammals, which does much to explain the unusual mix of mammalian and reptilian features. Unfortunately, up until the finding of this whole specimen, much of what is known about the animal has had to rely on guess work. Now scientists will be able to answer many questions that plagued them before in it's study, one being whether it held it's legs under itself such as a mammal, or whether they were held to the sides like an alligator.

Another reason that this find is so exciting to the scientific community is that the study will also help answer questions about the Permo-Triassic extinction, such as whether this was a rapid wipe-out of life forms on earth or a gradual decline. This question which when answered will lead to much more understanding of the development of life, and the earth itself. Whatever the answers may be to the many questions inherent in Gorgon, it is guaranteed that they will be fascinating.