![]() ![]() Diegoaelurus is the oldest animal, Poust says, that has the whole set of sabertoothed characteristics. At about 42 million years old, Diegoaelurus was among the last of its family but also specialized in a different way than other machaeroidines. Fossils of these creatures are so rare that it’s difficult to understand how they relate to other mammals, but they were part of the early burst of carnivorous beasts that evolved in the wake of the mass extinction that ended the Age of Dinosaurs. Named Diegoaelurus vanvalkenburghae, the bobcat-sized carnivore belonged to an ancient group of beasts called machaeroidines. But upon closer inspection, as Poust and colleagues report today in the journal PeerJ, the jaw turned out to belong to a very different species of little-known mammals that evolved knife-like fangs millions of years before cats even existed. The fossil was recovered from a construction site, as many southern California fossils are, and had been labeled as potentially belonging to a new species of nimravid–sabertoothed carnivores that were close relatives of cats. San Diego Natural History Museum paleontologist Ashley Poust was looking through the institution’s fossil library when he saw a curious and as-yet-unidentified jaw. The discovery of Earth’s earliest true sabertooth started in a museum collection. ![]() Among the humid forests of ancient San Diego about 42 million years ago, the earliest-known sabertooth made its debut. ![]() But now paleontologists have uncovered the oldest sabertoothed carnivore known, a very different hunter that belonged to a mysterious and entirely-extinct group of beasts. Time and again, mammals with long, piercing fangs have evolved and are often epitomized by burly, impressive predators like the sabercat Smilodon. Sabertoothed carnivores are some of evolution’s greatest hits. ![]()
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