Zofia's little hero

The artist's conception, with its erect ear and whiskered nose, makes the earth's first leaf-eating mammal look like one we wouldn't mind seeing in the backyard. Impossible, of course, since the recently discovered fossil evidence in Wyoming suggests the creature lived 130 million years ago, even before we put in our first zinnias. But we love the way scientists keep finding things from the past to explain the present - such as the possibility that the pioneer leaf-eater helped to distribute seeds and spread flowers around the globe.

It's somehow right, as Poles struggle to spread the flowers of freedom, that the mammal is proposed to be named for a Polish paleontologist, Zofia Kielan-Jaworowska. It would be''zofiabaatar'' -- Zofia's little heroic one. Let's hear it for the zofiabaatar!