jagroar
Prehistoric Safari : Pleistocene Florida
See the larger image.
Welcome back to the newest prehistoric safari adventure.
This time we're inviting you all through to the middle pleistocene Florida, about a million or so years back.
As you can see in this rarest encounter imaginable, this was when two morphologically very similar yet completely different types of 'sabertoothed tigers' briefly co-existed in south eastern part of the North America.
(from front to back):
Florida Dire wolves / Canis dirus
Cookie cutter cat / Xenosmilus hodsonae
Giant flat-headed Peccary / Platygonus compressus
North American Sabertoothed tiger / Smilodon fatalis
Teratorns / Teratornis sp.
Truman American cheetah / Miracinonyx trumani
Smildon fatalis was at the time, still a newbie who succeeded in becoming much more lethally equipped than its ancestors Rhizosmilodon fiteae, Smilodon gracilis and quickly distributed over the American continents. In this episode however, it's the other one, Xenosmilus hodsonae upon whom we'd like to shed light instead.
Xenosmilus hodsonae was the indigenous North American sabertoothed cat who was slightly larger than the contemporary Smilodon fatalis. Despite morphological similarities with Smilodon - especially of distinctively short and robust, grappling oriented distal limb segments - its long, narrow cranial and serrated canines were unmistakable traits of scimitar toothed cats. This morphological complexities have made physiological classification of Xenosmilus a bit confusing.
In 2008 study by Naples et., Xenosmilus' tooth row reveals to be evenly spaced and nearly continuous, a trait prompted researchers to call it colloquially as the 'cookie cutter cat'. Since its incisors vary in length, the full force of the creature's bite would have been concentrated on certain teeth at a time, an arrangement that would have made it easier to bite into any tough-hided prey. The study suggested that instead of delivering slashing bite to the prey's neck, the cookie cutter cat probably just hung on and bit out a fist-sized chunk of flesh, causing massive blood loss that would have sent victims into shock.
Why such formidable sabertoothed cat with uncanny anatomical combination eventually be outlasted by Smilodon and more 'archtypical' types of the scimitar cat? Was the slashing bite killing method of its purest form turning out to be somewhat superior to the cookie cutter bite method, or was the demise related to supposed pride formation of the North American Smilodon?
In the distance by the way, we're lucky to be able to capture the presence of the Truman American cheetah in this same picture. Later species of the genus Miracinonyx progressively geared toward hyper cursorial adaptations, becoming exactly like cheetahs and no longer left room for cougar elements in its morphology.
The cookie cutter cat and the American cheetah were both contrasting morphological extremes in a way: one was proportionally the stockiest and the other, the lankiest in the history of the cat family.
~Jagroar
This image belongs to the newest paleontology/morphology related information site, EoFauna
photo65
Prehistoric Safari : Pleistocene Florida
See the larger image.
Welcome back to the newest prehistoric safari adventure.
This time we're inviting you all through to the middle pleistocene Florida, about a million or so years back.
As you can see in this rarest encounter imaginable, this was when two morphologically very similar yet completely different types of 'sabertoothed tigers' briefly co-existed in south eastern part of the North America.
(from front to back):
Florida Dire wolves / Canis dirus
Cookie cutter cat / Xenosmilus hodsonae
Giant flat-headed Peccary / Platygonus compressus
North American Sabertoothed tiger / Smilodon fatalis
Teratorns / Teratornis sp.
Truman American cheetah / Miracinonyx trumani
Smildon fatalis was at the time, still a newbie who succeeded in becoming much more lethally equipped than its ancestors Rhizosmilodon fiteae, Smilodon gracilis and quickly distributed over the American continents. In this episode however, it's the other one, Xenosmilus hodsonae upon whom we'd like to shed light instead.
Xenosmilus hodsonae was the indigenous North American sabertoothed cat who was slightly larger than the contemporary Smilodon fatalis. Despite morphological similarities with Smilodon - especially of distinctively short and robust, grappling oriented distal limb segments - its long, narrow cranial and serrated canines were unmistakable traits of scimitar toothed cats. This morphological complexities have made physiological classification of Xenosmilus a bit confusing.
In 2008 study by Naples et., Xenosmilus' tooth row reveals to be evenly spaced and nearly continuous, a trait prompted researchers to call it colloquially as the 'cookie cutter cat'. Since its incisors vary in length, the full force of the creature's bite would have been concentrated on certain teeth at a time, an arrangement that would have made it easier to bite into any tough-hided prey. The study suggested that instead of delivering slashing bite to the prey's neck, the cookie cutter cat probably just hung on and bit out a fist-sized chunk of flesh, causing massive blood loss that would have sent victims into shock.
Why such formidable sabertoothed cat with uncanny anatomical combination eventually be outlasted by Smilodon and more 'archtypical' types of the scimitar cat? Was the slashing bite killing method of its purest form turning out to be somewhat superior to the cookie cutter bite method, or was the demise related to supposed pride formation of the North American Smilodon?
In the distance by the way, we're lucky to be able to capture the presence of the Truman American cheetah in this same picture. Later species of the genus Miracinonyx progressively geared toward hyper cursorial adaptations, becoming exactly like cheetahs and no longer left room for cougar elements in its morphology.
The cookie cutter cat and the American cheetah were both contrasting morphological extremes in a way: one was proportionally the stockiest and the other, the lankiest in the history of the cat family.
~Jagroar
This image belongs to the newest paleontology/morphology related information site, EoFauna
photo65