You are in the dry plains of Mongolia, 30 million years ago.

The scent hit you first—heavy, musky, and faintly metallic. You were crouched behind a dead tree, scouting for roots in the sparse, dusty landscape of the early Miocene. That’s when the silence of the plain was broken by a deep, guttural grunt.

You froze. Emerging from the scrub was a beast that looked like a nightmare cross between a hog and a grizzly bear. It stood nearly six feet tall at the shoulder, its body a muscular ruin of scars from past battles. Its head was disproportionately large, featuring massive fleshy lobes on its cheeks and a snout designed to destroy.

It stopped, snuffling the air with a jaw that seemed permanently locked in a 90-degree sneer, revealing teeth as thick as a human wrist. It was a male, a solitary terror looking for a fight or a meal. Its beady eyes locked onto the carcass of a small mammal near your hiding spot, but instead of eating, it began to rip at the ground with its hooves, throwing up thick dust and snapping small branches.

You dared not move. With a sound like tearing metal, it snapped a tree branch with its front teeth just to test its strength. It was pure menace. Slowly, deliberately, it turned and began walking in your direction. There was nowhere to run. The beast simply walked closer, looking to make you its next, easy snack…