Before dinosaurs, these creatures ruled the earth

You wander through a museum, glance at some dinosaur bones and think that one skull looks a little funny. You've discovered a new species.

Sure, that sounds unlikely. But that's what happened when a North Carolina paleontologist discovered two new species of protomammals, mammal-like reptiles that existed millions of years before dinosaurs, while visiting a small Russian museum.

Almost an entire skull of the saber-toothed Gorynychus sat unidentified in the Vyatka Paleontological Museum in Kirov, Russia, until Christian Kammerer, research curator of paleontology at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences, stopped by for a short visit.