The fossil in his hand belonged to Diegoaelurus, a bobcat-sized carnivore that lived around 42 million years earlier. Smilodon developed roughly 40 million years after Diegoaelurus went extinct, but both animals were saber-toothed, hyper-carnivorous predators, indicating their diets consisted nearly totally of meat. Credit: San Diego Natural History Museum
This early meat-eating predator is part of a strange group of animals called Machaeroidines. Now entirely extinct, they were not closely related to todays living carnivores. “We know so little about Machaeroidines, so every new discovery significantly expands our image of them,” stated coauthor Dr. Shawn Zack of the University of Arizona College of Medicine. “This relatively total, unspoiled Diegoaelurus fossil is specifically helpful since the teeth let us presume the diet and start to understand how Machaeroidines belong to each other,” said Zack.
Zack, Poust, and their third coauthor Hugh Wagner, likewise from The Nat, named the predator Diegoaelurus vanvalkenburghae. The name honors San Diego County where the specimen was found and researcher Blaire Van Valkenburgh, previous president of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, whose fundamental work on the evolution of predators affected this research study.
About the Discovery
D. vanvalkenburghae was about the size of a bobcat, however with a downturned bony chin to safeguard its long upper sabre teeth. It would have been a fairly brand-new and powerful kind of hunter.
” Nothing like this had existed in mammals in the past,” said Poust. “A couple of mammal ancestors had long fangs, but Diegoaelurus and its few loved ones represent the first cat-like approach to an all-meat diet plan, with sabre-teeth in front and slicing scissor teeth called carnassials in the back. Its a powerful combination that a number of animal groups have individually evolved in the millions of years given that.”
The Diegoaelurus jawbone fossil has actually been in The Nats collection given that 1988. It was recovered from a building and construction website in Oceanside by the museums PaleoServices team. When this meat-eating animal was alive 42 million years back, San Diego was covered in rainforests populated by many small, unusual rodents, marsupials, primates and hooved mammals. Credit: San Diego Natural History Museum
This animal and its family members represent a sort of evolutionary experiment, a very first stab at hypercarnivory– a lifestyle that is followed today by real felines. With only a handful of fossil specimens from Wyoming and Asia, the machaeroidines are so badly understood that scientists werent even sure if there were numerous species living within the same time period. “This fossil finding shows that machaeroidines were more diverse than we believed,” says Zack.
That puts it within striking range of the time that the next cat-like animals arrived in North America, the nimravids or sabre-tooth false-cats,” he stated. We do not know yet, but San Diego is proving to be a remarkably crucial location for carnivore development.”
About the Santiago Formation
The fossil comes from San Diego County in southern California, at a location very first discovered in the 1980s by a local 12-year-old young boy. Ever since, “Jeffs Discovery Site” has become a crucial fossil bed within a larger group of rocks called the Santiago Formation. Fossils of an entire environment have been found in these 42 million-year-old rocks, painting a picture of a really different San Diego than the one we understand today. Though mostly unattainable, these crucial fossil beds are sometimes exposed by construction tasks and road growths, permitting researchers from The Nat to keep digging for proof of Californias ancient, tropical past.
” Not only was San Diego further south due to tectonic plate movements, but the Eocene was a wetter, warmer world,” stated Poust. “The Santiago Formation fossils reveal us a forested, damp California where tiny rhinos, early tapirs, and odd sheep-like, herbivorous oreodonts grazed under trees while uncommon primates and marsupials hold on to the canopy above. This richness of prey species would have been an assortment for Diegoaelurus, enabling it to live the life of a specialized hunter before most other mammals.”
The short article “Diegoaelurus, a brand-new machaeroidine (Oxyaenidae) from the Santiago Formation (late Uintan) of southern California and the relationships of Machaeroidinae, the oldest group of sabertooth mammals” is published in PeerJ.
About the 3D model
The jaw of the newly named meat-eater is offered to see in 3D free of charge on the San Diego Natural History Museums website.
To access this 3D design and view in your browser, go here.
Reference: “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” 15 March 2022, PeerJ.DOI: 10.7717/ peerj.13032.
About the San Diego Natural History Museum.
The San Diego Natural History Museum (The Nat) is one of Californias earliest and most highly regarded cultural and scientific institutions. Established in 1874 by a small group of person scientists, the Museum works to protect and protect this remarkable place we call home.
Credit: San Diego Natural History Museum
When this meat-eating animal was alive 42 million years ago, San Diego was covered in rain forests populated by lots of little, uncommon rodents, marsupials, primates and hooved mammals. Credit: San Diego Natural History Museum
The fossil comes from San Diego County in southern California, at a place very first discovered in the 1980s by a local 12-year-old boy. Fossils of an entire community have been discovered in these 42 million-year-old rocks, painting a photo of a very various San Diego than the one we know today.
Diegoalerus with fossil. Credit: San Diego Natural History Museum
Paleontologists describe sabre-toothed mammal new to science, offering view into advancement of meat-eaters.
The fossil, housed in The Nats paleontology collection, offers a window into what the Earth resembled during the Eocene Period, more than 40 million years earlier. The specimen includes a lower jaw and unspoiled teeth, giving us new details about the habits and advancement of some of the very first mammals to have a specifically meat-based diet.
42 million years earlier, mammals were only simply figuring out how to survive on meat alone,” said Dr. Ashley Poust, postdoctoral researcher at The Nat. “One huge advance was to progress specialized teeth for slicing flesh– which is something we see in this newly described specimen.”
