Fossil with sharp teeth and saber teeth sheds new light on ancestors of domestic cats

Anyone who has ever had a love bite from a cat knows that it can be very painful. Streepje, Minoes and Moortje may have a cuddly appearance, but they can bite very hard. But those sharp teeth serve a purpose: our mustachioed friends can easily digest a meat-only diet.

However, such a hypercarnivorous diet, which tigers also use, is a recent thing, scientists say. The ancestors of felines still struggled with this diet. Scientists have just discovered a new ancestor of the domestic cat which was one of the first to develop teeth to eat only meat.

It is a feline that resembles the modern lynx. The species lived about 40 million years ago and had saber teeth in addition to incisors. The feline belongs to the Machairodontinae or saber-toothed cats. Scientists made the discovery after studying a fossil in San Diego, USA. The species is Diegoaelurus vanvalkenburghae named after the location of the fossil and paleontologist Blaire Van Valkenburgh.

D. Vanvalkenburghae was likely an “evolutionary experiment”, the scientists said. Judging by the distribution of felines in the modern world, this experiment was a success.

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250 million years ago, the cacophony of the animal kingdom began

Although life on Earth began about 3.7 billion years ago, it took a long time to make itself felt. Movements in water, air, and land could be heard, but no animal had notes to its song yet. It only appeared 250 million years ago, writes paleontologist Michael Habib in the scientific journal Scientific American. The fossil of a grasshopper that lived 250 million years ago is the oldest evidence of an animal sounding instrument.