The paleontology collection at the San Diego Natural History Museum has a fossil that shows what the Earth was like 40 million years ago. The lower jaw and well-preserved teeth give us new information about the behavior and evolution of some of the first mammals to have an exclusively meat-based diet.
Today, the ability to eat an all-meat diet is not uncommon. polar bears can do it. If you have a cat at home, you may have a hypercarnivore. Animals were only figuring out how to survive on meat alone 42 million years ago.
This predator is part of a group of animals called Machaeroidines. They were not related to today's living animals.
The predator Diegoaelurus vanvalkenburghae was named by the three coauthors from The Nat. The specimen was found in San Diego County and Blaire Van Valkenburgh was the past president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.
About the discovery.
D. vanvalkenburghae had a chin that was downturned to protect its teeth. It would have been a new kind of hunter.
The first cat-like approach to an all- meat diet in mammals is what Diegoaelurus and its few relatives represent. Several animal groups have independently evolved in the millions of years since.
This animal and its relatives represent a sort of evolutionary experiment, a first stab at hypercarnivory, a lifestyle that is followed today by true cats. The fossils from Wyoming and Asia show that machaeroidines were more diverse than we thought. The smaller form lived at the same time as the larger one. It raises the possibility that there are more out there.
They may have coexisted with other sabre-toothed animals. He said that it was within striking distance of the time when the next cat-like animals arrived in North America. San Diego is proving to be an important place for carnivore evolution.
The Santiago Formation is about.
The fossil was discovered in the 1980s by a local boy in San Diego County. Jeff's Discovery site has become an important fossil bed within a larger group of rocks called the Santiago Formation. These rocks are 42 million years old and have fossils of an entire ecology, which paints a different picture of San Diego than we know today. Construction projects and road expansions allow scientists from The Nat to keep digging for evidence of California's ancient, tropical past.
San Diego was further south due to plate movements, and the Santiago Formation fossils show a forested, wet California. The richness of prey species would have allowed Diegoaelurus to live a life of specialized hunting before most other mammals.
The article, Diegoaelurus, a new machaeroidine from the Santiago Formation of southern California and the relationships of Machaeroidinae, the oldest group of sabertooth mammals, is published in Peer.
There is a 3D model.
The San Diego Natural History Museum is giving away the jaw of the meat eater for free.
You can view this 3D model in your browser.
More information: Shawn P. Zack et al, Diegoaelurus, a new machaeroidine (Oxyaenidae) from the Santiago Formation (late Uintan) of southern California and the relationships of Machaeroidinae, the oldest group of sabertooth mammals, PeerJ (2022). DOI: 10.7717/peerj.13032 Journal information: PeerJ Citation: New sabre-tooth predator precedes cats by millions of years (2022, March 15) retrieved 17 March 2022 from https://phys.org/news/2022-03-sabre-tooth-predator-cats-millions-years.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
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