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Newly identified species of saber-toothed cat in North America during Miocene
- DonHopkins 5y agoSo a prehistoric Maine Coon, basically. https://guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-cat-(domestic) https://guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-cat-(...
- feralimal 5y agoThey don't show us the fragments of bone they have in that article. "Then they used digital images and specialized software to find similarities between the relics – and differences from other cat species, which was just as important." It sounds like they are using a computer model of some sort to make this determination. A model that takes an image and is used to make a determination of a new species is not convincing to me. Models are only a hypothetical explanation. Having software feed in to models is even more detached from reality, IMO. Models and software might lead us towards some area that needs further investigation, but they are not actually proof of anything, as this article seems to think.
- keithnz 5y agoodd... it says it has a body mass of 274kg..... but a tiger can be more than 300kg ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiger )
- 988747 5y agoYes, the title is sensationalist... BTW: Tigers are big enough to sometimes hunt elephants (the smaller, asian kind), so hunting rhinos doesn't seem impossible.
- Nursie 5y agoAnd Smilodon Populator is described on wikipedia with a weight range of 220-436kg, so this is not a giant that's out of the range of what we already know. It's still a big ol' cat though!
- goatinaboat 5y agoI hope that with genetic engineering techniques we will be able to reintroduce more species of cats.
- ksaxena 5y agoWhy?
- HenryBemis 5y agoI hope the 'parent' means "cats what became extinct due to man's stupid hunt practices" and not "Jurassic Park". No animal can survive human's relentless attack, so re-introducing something that WE destroyed makes some sense. Re-introducing something that evolution phased out, (imho - not an ethicist/biologist) is inappropriate. Also something 'out of its time' is not a nice thing to have. T-Rex made sense when there were other big-size herbivores to feast on. A pack of T-Rex now would hunt and feast on what?
- mc32 5y agoWasn’t if more climactic change that brought about their demise more than prehistoric people?
- Semaphor 5y agoAncient relative of the Smilodon (which, as I now learned, is not a fantasy species): > S. populator from South America was the largest species, at 220 to 436 kg (485 to 961 lb) in weight and 120 cm (47 in) in height -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smilodon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smilodon
- L_226 5y agoThis reminds me of my favourite explanation of why many children are afraid of the dark; we are decended from hominids that were big-cat prey and are genetically predisposed to be hyperalert at night.
- ptx 5y agoIsn't the fact that darkness effectively disables one of your most important senses, so that you can't tell what's going on, enough of an explanation? Aren't you (as I know I am) afraid of writing code that you can't test, for example, despite our hominid ancestors' lack of computers?
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoI tend to think that may be why we're dormant at night. To keep off of the big cat's radar.
- kareemm 5y agoThe biggest revelation to me is that dinosaur bones get auctioned off to private buyers. That one could purchase a T-Rex tooth for about $3k USD seems incredibly cool to me.
- 29athrowaway 5y agoOlder geological eras were the arena for really weird encounters, such as dwarf elephants vs giant swans (not making this up).