A reconstruction of the oldest known gorgonopsian
Henry Sutherland Sharpe
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 land-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 terrestrial 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.
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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.
Dating back an estimated 270 million years, the predator is the oldest known member of a group of meat-eaters known as the gorgonopsians, which all had sabre teeth. The largest gorgonopsians grew several metres in length and had canine teeth 15 centimetres long. The Mallorca gorgonopsian was smaller, with a body length of about a metre and canines that were just 5-centimetres long. Fortuny says the researchers are waiting until they have analysed the bones and teeth in more detail before they give the new gorgonopsian a name.
The ancient predator is significant for more than just its age. When it roamed Mallorca, the island was located in the tropics as part of a supercontinent called Pangaea, but all previously known gorgonopsian fossils come from areas of the world that were at high latitudes 270 million years ago. The new find suggests that the gorgonopsians actually originated nearer the equator.
It is possible that the adaptations they developed there – such as more energy-efficient movement and the ability to hunt large prey – also included the ability to control their body temperature. As a result, they could spread into cooler habitats away from the equator.
Understanding more about this process is important, says Fortuny, because the gorgonopsians belonged to the therapsids, an animal group that also includes mammals. “There’s a lot of discussion about the first steps in thermoregulation for this group,” he says.
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