Sabre-Tooth Cat: Predator by Design - Ice Age Giants From 2.5 Million Years Ago

[♥ Lily ♥]

[♥ Lily ♥]

Remains of a Sabre toothed tiger the size of a horse found off British coast

The partial leg bone of a sabre-toothed tiger which was the size of a horse has been dredged from the seabed by a trawler in the North Sea.


Sabre-tooth tiger: the fossil is the furthest north evidence of this species has ever been found

By Richard Alleyne, Science Correspondent 5:18PM GMT 19 Nov 2008

The fossil, which is between one and two million years old and was found near the UK coast, is from a type of sabre-tooth called a scimitar cat.

It is the furthest north this species has ever been found, and the first time remains have come from the North Sea.

The dry steppe landscape, criss-crossed by rivers, where animals such as the scimitar cat once roamed was flooded at the end of the last Ice Age.

The fossil remains of more common extinct beasts such as the mammoth are routinely recovered from the sea by trawlers.

Dick Mol, a palaeontologist based at the Natural History Museum in Rotterdam, said the partial humerus belonged to a "huge" (probably male) cat that weighed about 881lbs (400kg).

Other Early Pleistocene animals recovered from this part of the North Sea include elephant-like mastodon, southern mammoth, hippopotamus, horses, bears and giant deer.

"The fauna we are dealing with - the southern mammoth, the hippo, the giant deer and this sabre-toothed cat - were adapted to a savannah-like environment," Mr Mol said.

"[The cat] was probably living in the forest that bordered on the river banks. It was like the Serengeti, but in our back garden."

Other Early Pleistocene animals recovered from this part of the North Sea include elephant-like mastodon, southern mammoth, hippopotamus, horses, bears and giant deer.

The remains of only one other sabre-toothed cat - a much younger species called Homotherium latidens - have previously been recovered from the North Sea.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/scie...ish-coast.html

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1st sabre-tooth instance: Synapsida, the gorgonopsid Gorgonops skull


2nd sabre-tooth instance: Thylacosmilidae (Sparassodonta) - Thylacosmilus atrox skull


3rd sabre-tooth instance: Oxyaenidae - Machaeroides skull


4th sabre-tooth instance: Nimravidae (Carnivora) - Hoplophoneus primaevus skull and upper cervical vertebrae


5th sabre-tooth instance: Barbourofelidae (Carnivora) - Barbourofelis skeleton


6th sabre-tooth instance: Felidae (Carnivora) - Smilodon skull and upper cervical vertebrae

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saber-toothed_cat