Tag: cats
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PBS Eons: How the Tibetan Plateau Created the Ultimate Cat
PBS Eons has a new video. This one is about the evolution and migration of Homotherium, a large saber-tooted cat that lived on the Tibetan Plateau. How did Homotherium evolve to be so successful, and so different from basically all other cats, living and extinct? Well the answer may lie in a huge geological event:…
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New Prehistoric Cat Species Discovered in Spain
SciNews has a post about the discovery of a new species of ancient cat. Magerifelis peignei lived about 15.5 million years ago during the Miocene epoch in what is now Spain. It was discovered in 2007 near Madrid at Príncipe Pío-2, which was then a recently discovered fossil locality. The description was published recently in…
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PBS Eons: The Curious Case of the Cave Lion
PBS Eons has a new episode. This one is about large cats from ancient Eurasia. A mysterious, large feline roamed Eurasia during the last ice age. Its fossils have been found across the continent, and it’s been the subject of ancient artwork. So what exactly were these big cats?
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Nature: Newly Identified Species of Saber-Toothed Cat Was So Big It Hunted Rhinos in America
Nature as an article about the identification of a new species of large saber-toothed cat. The animal, Machairodus lahayishupup, lived between 5 and 9 million years ago in North America. It’s larger than its ancient relative Smilodon, weighing in around 600 pounds or larger. The research has been published in the Journal of Mammalian Evolution. A…
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PBS Eons: How We Domesticated Cats (Twice)
PBS Eons has a new episode and it’s a great one for cat lovers! It seems that cats have been domesticated twice and this is the story of Felis silvestris lybica. A 9,500 year old burial in Cyprus represents some of the oldest known evidence of human/cat companionships anywhere in the world. But when…
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PLOS Paleo: Vote for the Top 10 Taxa of 2017
On the PLOS Paleo blog, you can vote for the top 10 taxa of 2017. There’s many interesting choices, both vertebrate and invertebrate, dinosaurs (Burianosaurus augusta and Borealopelta markmitchelli), fish (Babelichthys olneyi), cats (Anatoliadelphys maasae), and beetles (Antarctotechus balli) are just a few of the possible selections. Have fun and tell all your friends! Hurry…
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Saber-tooth Cat Extinction
Vanderbilt University: (hat tip, Dave Carlson, ESCONI Discussion Group) In the period just before they went extinct, the American lions and saber-toothed cats that roamed North America in the late Pleistocene were living well off the fat of the land. That is the conclusion of the latest study of the microscopic wear patterns on the…
