25 million years ago there was an ancient carnivore with sharp catlike teeth but with doglike bodies. Hyaenodonts, as it was called, once reigned as apex predators feared by beasts of the ancient past. And then it disappeared.
For years scientists have been puzzled by their sudden extinction. Some paleontologists in Egypt might have found some evidence that explains the evolutionary history of these once fearsome cat dogs.
A team of paleontologists from all over the world found a nearly complete skull of a previously unidentified subspecies of hyaenodonta. The fossil was found in the Fayum Depression of Egypt’s Western Desert.
It dates back to the early Oligocene Epoch—placing it around 30 million years old. Initially found back in 2020, the researchers only recently published their findings in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, which is not a scientific journal dedicated to old spines, like I thought it was when I first read it.
Paleontologists Find Intact Skull of Carnivorous ‘King of the Ancient Egyptian Forest’
The skull, which is named Bastetodon syrtos—after the Egyptian goddess Bastet—is astoundingly complete given its age. This Hyaenodont had a short snout outfitted with knifelike teeth that used to viciously shred its prey. If, given the species name, you assumed they were kind of like modern-day hyenas, you’re not too far off.
Doctor Matthew Borths, the study’s co-author and a curator of fossils at the Duke Lemur Center Museum of Natural History at Duke University, says they’re “like really beefy wolverines or basically like pit bulls. They have really big heads that were just covered in muscles.” The study’s lead author, Shorouq Al-Ashqar, called this beast “the king of the ancient Egyptian forest.”
This thing was so deadly that it probably prayed on ancient humans along with elephants and hippos. For as gnarly as its teeth were, researchers speculate it’s those same mouth knives that led to its extinction. As global cooling temperatures of the Fayum Depression’s tropical environment, carnivorous species like hyaenodonts were hit especially hard, as the ensuing mass extinctions like to increased competition for a dwindling food supply.
Ancient ancestors of modern cats, dogs, and hyenas were suddenly competing for the same reduced number of meat sources. It’s all just a theory for now. Researchers still aren’t certain why this one’s dominant carnivore was eventually replaced by the dogs and cats we call pets today.
But the discovery of Bastetodon is already helping paleontologists better understand the creature’s place in the fossil record.
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