Image courtesy of Henry Sutherland Sharpe
Joel Kontinen
The oldest known
sabre-toothed animal hunted large prey 270 million years ago – and its newly
discovered remains could help us unravel how early mammal relatives became
warm-blooded.
The first laned-based
predators typically hunted relatively small prey. But
things changed about 273 million years ago, when an event known as Olson’s
Extinction shook up ecosystems around the world. Afterwards, much larger tgerrestrial herbivores began
appearing – and predators needed new weapons to dispatch such large
prey, says Josep Fortuny at the Miquel Crusafont Catalan Institute of
Palaeontology in Barcelona, Spain.
This might help
explain why the fossilised partial skeleton of an ancient predator – which
Fortuny and his colleagues have just discovered on the Spanish island of
Mallorca – had sabre teeth. These fangs are better at injuring
large prey, as opposed to grasping and holding smaller animals. “It was the first opportunity to have this type of
tool to prey on herbivores,” says Fortuny.
Evolution relies
on the concept of millions of years, without
it evolution would not be possible as it needs time to do its story.
Source:
Colin Barras 2024 Earliest known sabre-toothed predator hunted 270 million years ago | New Scientist17 December
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