By By Marcus Hondro Oct 5, 2015 in Science In the badlands of northwestern Mexico scientists have discovered the fossil remains of a previously unknown creature that lived many millions of years ago. The name is hard to pronounce but the creature easy to define: spunky. Surviving destruction The details of the discovery of Kimbetopsalis simmonsae were Kimbetopsalis simmonsae, for simplicity let's just call this guy Kim Sim, was covered in fur and resembled (but was not) a rodent and was about three feet long (one metre). The spunky thing about this plant-eating creature is that it For Kim Sim managed to live beyond the catastrophic destruction of 65.5 million years ago when an asteroid hit the Earth (in present-day Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula) and a series of volcano eruptions in India destroyed 75 percent of all living things on the planet, including the dinosaurs (except birds). Outliving dinosaurs The destruction ended what's known as the Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte of the University of Scotland, a part of the research team, said some creatures were just lucky to survive the catastrophe. "It's larger than almost all of the mammals that lived with the dinosaurs, and also had a plant-eating diet, which few if any dinosaur-living mammals had," Brusatte said. He added that Kim Sim didn't just survive, but thrived in the new environment, sans dinosaurs and so many other beasts. "Mammals, which actually originated hundreds of millions of years earlier at the same time as the dinosaurs, now found themselves in an empty world, and they took advantage," he said. The fossils the research team found are from about 500,000 years after the destruction wreaked by the asteroid. Kim Sim weighed up to 220 lbs. (100kg.). The details of the discovery of Kimbetopsalis simmonsae were published Monday in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. Scientists from the University of Edinburgh, New Mexico Museum of Natural History and University of Nebraska discovered the fossils of the buck-toothed (yes, beaver-like) and massive-molared creatures.Kimbetopsalis simmonsae, for simplicity let's just call this guy Kim Sim, was covered in fur and resembled (but was not) a rodent and was about three feet long (one metre). The spunky thing about this plant-eating creature is that it survived when others, such as the dinosaurs, were unable to.For Kim Sim managed to live beyond the catastrophic destruction of 65.5 million years ago when an asteroid hit the Earth (in present-day Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula) and a series of volcano eruptions in India destroyed 75 percent of all living things on the planet, including the dinosaurs (except birds).The destruction ended what's known as the Cretaceous Period and it began what is known as the Paleocene Epoch. Kim Sim was a member of the multituberculates group of mammals and lived in both periods, and beyond. In total Kim Sim lived from about 100 million years ago until about 35 million years ago, a rather lengthy amount of time, no?Palaeontologist Steve Brusatte of the University of Scotland, a part of the research team, said some creatures were just lucky to survive the catastrophe."It's larger than almost all of the mammals that lived with the dinosaurs, and also had a plant-eating diet, which few if any dinosaur-living mammals had," Brusatte said. He added that Kim Sim didn't just survive, but thrived in the new environment, sans dinosaurs and so many other beasts."Mammals, which actually originated hundreds of millions of years earlier at the same time as the dinosaurs, now found themselves in an empty world, and they took advantage," he said.The fossils the research team found are from about 500,000 years after the destruction wreaked by the asteroid. Kim Sim weighed up to 220 lbs. (100kg.). More about cretaceous period, Kimbetopsalis simmonsae, new species of mammal More news from Show all 9 cretaceous period Kimbetopsalis simmon... new species of mamma...