IN THE LAST DAYS OF SABRE-TOOTH CAT

Sabre-tooth cat skull

Sabre-tooth cats, one of the most fearsome cats of all time, rule the land of the North America in the ice age. They are the top predator of the land of North America in the Ice Age. Huge preys like the Bison, horses are the main prey of the Sabre-Tooth Cat. The normal temperature of the North America never exceeded more than 40 degree in the complete Ice age era. In that time most probably the land of North America is not like this. Most probably the places are not dry and there exist huge forests with big trees and grasslands. This forest and the grasslands create huge covers for the Sabre-Tooth Cats to hunt. If we see the bone structure of the Sabre-Tooth Cat, we find that, the sabre-tooth cats are much heavier than other big cats of today. This indicates they are much slower than today’s cat. So they must be much more dependent on their sneak attack. So the covers from the grasslands and the forests with huge trees are very much in favour of them – That makes the Sabre-tooth cat the top predator of the entire North America in the ice age.

Now we are entering 10,000 years ago from today. The time is changing. It is the End of the Ice age era. The climate is changing rapidly. The ice is melting rapidly. The forestland with huge trees and grasslands become the place of much drier open field with short grasses. That is making the most of the herbivorous megafauna migrate. But surprisingly one megafauna is looking like very much adoptable with this environmental change – It is the Bison. And actually in this new environmental condition the bison are more comfortable and their population increases in those open field.

Imaginary body of the Sabre-tooth cat

After ruling the North America, now suddenly the Sabre-tooth is losing its grip in the wild. In fact they are decreasing rapidly. In the time of the ice age the maximum temperature never crossed 40 degree, but now the temperature is much higher, the lands become drier; the big land forests and the grasslands are gone. These cause a huge problem to the sabre-tooth cat to hunt. We know the sabre-tooth cats hunting completely depends on the fact that how much they are capable of being camouflaged. Since all the big tree forests and grasslands are now gone and they are replaced by the open fields, Sabre-tooth cats are losing their chance of being unseen. We can simply say the climate is betraying the Sabre-tooth cats in these days. Also the numbers of the Bison population increasing now – This gives the bison herds a lot of more pairs of eyes to watch their backs. So they can see the cat from a long distance and can run away. Sabre-tooth cat figure is not built to chase down a prey and hunt it down, as they are much slower than modern world cheetah, lions, tigers etc.

This new world makes the Sabre-tooth cats food less. They started to decrease from the world only because of the food. In their last days, the sabre-tooth cats lived a life where they can see their prey standing not too far from them but still out of their reach.

The last sabre-tooth cat – a female cat, most probably has two kids. She tried to hunt bison for many times but failed every time. Then she abandoned its kids and travelled long for food. It finally reaches the La Brea Tar Pit and sees some dead or trapped animals. She entered the tar pit and got trapped in the tar and died there.

The Last Sabre-Tooth Cat died like this and The Sabre-Tooth Cat extinct from the world.

Extinct kitten-sized hunter discovered

Western Reserve University student and his mentor have discovered an ancient kitten-sized predator that lived in Bolivia about 13 million years ago -- one of the smallest species reported in the extinct order Sparassodonta.

Third-year undergraduate student Russell Engelman and Case Western Reserve anatomy professor Darin Croft made the finding by analyzing a partial skull that had been in a University of Florida collection more than three decades.

The researchers report their finding in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

"The animal would have been about the size of a marten, a catlike weasel found in the Northeastern United States and Canada, and probably filled the same ecological niche," said Engelman, an evolutionary biology major from Russell Township, Ohio.

The researchers refrained from naming the new species mainly because the specimen lacks well-preserved teeth, which are the only parts preserved in many of its close relatives.

The skull, which would have been a little less than 3 inches long if complete, shows the animal had a very short snout. A socket, or alveolus, in the upper jaw shows it had large, canines, that were round in cross-section much like those of a meat-eating marsupial, called the spotted-tailed quoll, found in Australia today, the researchers said.

Although sparassodonts are more closely related to modern opossums than cats and dogs, the group included saber-toothed species that fed on large prey. This small Bolivian species probably fed on the ancient relatives of today's guinea pigs and spiny rats, the researchers said.

"Most predators don't go after animals of equal size, but these features indicate this small predator was a formidable hunter," Croft said.

The specimen had not been studied in detail after being collected. It was provisionally identified as belonging to a particular group of extinct meat-eating opossums, due in part to its small size. Further adding to the identity challenge, almost all small sparassodonts have been identified by their teeth and lower jaws, which this skull lacks.

Croft wanted to study the skull because its age is nearly twice that of the oldest known species of meat-eating opossum. The specimen was found in a mountainous site known as Quebrada Honda, Bolivia, in 1978, in rock layers dated 12 million to 13 million years ago.

Structurally, extinct meat-eating opossums and sparassodont skulls share a number of similarities due to their similar meat-eating diet, Engelman said.

"No single feature found in the skull was so distinctive that we could say one way or the other what it was," Croft said, "but the combination of features is unique and says this is a sparassodont."

One key was that a particular bone of the orbit, the boney socket of the eye, does not touch the nasal bone in an opossum but does in a sparassodont.

The short snout was a kind of red herring. While jaguar-sized sparassodonts had them, the smaller members of the order had fox-like faces. And this species was smaller than most of those.

These smaller sparassodonts also have gaps between their teeth that are absent in most larger species. The skull shows no gaps.

Overall, the animal's features are a mixture of those found in different species of sparassodonts, but are not characteristic of in any one subgroup within the order. That puts this species near the bottom of the family tree, the researchers said.

Croft, who regularly collects from the same site where the skull was found, will return there this summer to gather evidence he hopes will show whether this species lived in an open grassland, forest or mixed habitat.

He also hopes to find the lower jaw, which may enable direct comparisons with known species and provide enough foundation to name the animal.

DOES THE DIRE WOLF CARE FOR EACH OTHER IN THE PACK?

From the remaining of the dire wolf what we found in the La Brea Tar Pit we found some of the broken dire wolf bones. These injuries most probably happened when these animals were out for hunting. In one case the researcher found that the upper hand arm bone of the dire wolf is broken, and this injury may makes that dire wolf a three legged animal. In another case the scientist found that one eye of the dire wolf was completely smashed. That dire wolf may be left one eyed after that injury. Now in the first case, from the study of the remaining it is found that that species lived at least 5 to 6 months more after that injury. In the second case, we found that that dire wolf lived several years after that injury. But here a huge question arises – in the both cases, the dire wolf surely lost their capability of hunting a large prey. So they cannot hunt by their own. Then how those dire wolves lived so long time after that injury? The probability of getting dead animal flesh every time is very much low.  This makes many scientists to believe that may be in the pack, the dire wolf care for each other,

Again in many dire wolves bone remaining we found the bite marks of none but the other dire wolves. So, it’s confirm that they dire wolf fight with each other.

That is why some scientists also thing that the dire wolf hunt in packs but they do not care for each other. And they also believe that in the broken dire wolf remains, the injuries are not that fatal that they cannot hunt by themselves. And more over the fighting between the dire wolves proves that the dire wolf do not care for each other. They just hunt in packs but no caring for each other, just like their gray wolf cousin.

Now I’m going to say what I believe in this case and explain why I believe this.

According to my study and imagination, I believe the dire wolves do care for each other in the pack.  I’ve seen that broken bones in a documentary called ‘Prehistoric Predator- episode 1-Dire Wolf’ in Net Geo Wild. I believe – those injuries are not that fatal that they cannot hunt. But as we know, the world was not same as of today. And the prey species of the dire wolves are normally the larger prey. And with those injuries those dire wolves just cannot hunt the larger prey alone. Now, because of their injury, they cannot hunt with the packs. One weak wolf in the time of hunting gave the prey a huge advantage to save himself.

Now, if we believe the fact that the dire wolf pack does not care for each other, then the injured dire wolf is not needed in the pack. They became a single wolf, and have to hunt alone. With that injury they cannot hunt larger prey. Now we concentrate to the smaller preys and the carcass what they can get. Every prey has its own way to save itself. Most of the smaller preys are either very much fast runner or a perfect Camouflage. So for a one eyed dire wolf or a three legged dire wolf it looks almost impossible to hunt those animals. And on the case of carcass, here, they can be able to find that, but you see, 10000 years ago the North America is a nightmare for everybody, there are many big deadly predators like sabre-tooth cat, short-faced bear and many more. So, finding the carcass for several years regularly and feed that completely without any other predator’s attention is impossible. More over most probably the North American lands are just like today’s African lands where a predator killed another to secure their foods and the future of their own siblings. So other predators will kill that single wolf at the first sight. This proves that the injured dire wolf continued with the pack and since the lived a long live after the injury that confirms the other wolves in their packs share their food with the injured ones.

Remaining of dire wolves found in the La Brea Tar Pit

For the bite marks of the dire wolves in the other dire wolves bone may be because of this – u see, in the La Brea Tar Pit we found 3500 individual dire wolf remaining –  Much larger than other any other predator. This leads us to the fact that the dire wolves dominated that area. Now, it’s not possible that there is only one pack that rules that area. Because if that happened then there is no other predator remains that place. The huge dire wolf pack finished all other predators. But that does not happened. So there are many packs controlling the North America. Very much likely they often involved in brutal fights between themselves. Again in the packs, there may be sometimes fights occurs to dominate the pack. These are may be the cause of the injuries of the dire wolves happened by other dire wolves.

New Tyrannosaur named 'Pinocchio rex'

Pinocchio was smaller than T. rex but its nose was a third longer - perhaps for a different hunting strategy

A new type of Tyrannosaur with a very long nose has been nicknamed "Pinocchio rex".

The ferocious carnivore, nine metres long with a distinctive horny snout, was a cousin of Tyrannosaurus rex.

Its skeleton was dug up in a Chinese construction site and identified by scientists at Edinburgh University, UK.

The 66-million-year-old predator, officially named Qianzhousaurus sinensis.

"Pinocchio" looked very different to other tyrannosaurs.

"It had the familiar toothy grin of T. rex, but its snout was long and slender, with a row of horns on top," said Edinburgh's Dr Steve Brusatte.

"It might have looked a little comical, but it would have been as deadly as any other tyrannosaur, and maybe even a little faster and stealthier.

"We thought it needed a nickname, and the long snout made us think of Pinocchio's long nose."

Researchers now think several different tyrannosaurs lived and hunted alongside each other in Asia during the late Cretaceous Period, the last days of the dinosaurs.

The enormous Tarbosaurus (up to 13m) had deep and powerful jaws likeT. rex - strong enough to crush the bones of giant herbivores.

The thinner teeth and lighter skeleton of Qianzhousaurus suggest it hunted smaller creatures, such as lizards and feathered dinosaurs. But at nine metres tall and weighing almost a tonne, it was still a gigantic carnivore.

"You wouldn't want to run into either of these guys," said Dr Brusatte.

'Weird features'

Pinocchio's snout was 35% longer than other dinosaurs of its size. So, why the long face?

"The truth is we don't know yet. But it must've been doing something different," Dr Brusatte told BBC News.

"The iconic picture of a tyrannosaur is T. Rex, the biggest, baddest dinosaur of all.

"But this new species was lighter, less muscular. It breaks the mould. Perhaps it had a faster bite and hunted in a different way."

Prof Junchang Lu and Dr Steve Brusatte at the discovery site

The discovery of "Pinocchio" settles an argument over a series of strange new fossil finds.

In recent years, two tyrannosaurs with unusually prominent proboscises were dug up in Mongolia, and named Alioramus.

The horny-snouted predators appeared to come from an entirely new branch of the tyrannosaur family.

"The trouble was, they were both juveniles. So it was possible their long snouts were just a weird transient feature that grows out in adults," said Dr Brusatte, an expert in tyrannosaur evolution.

But this new Qianzhousaurus specimen is an almost fully mature adult. It was found largely intact and remarkably well preserved by road construction workers near Ganzhou in southern China.

"It's twice the size of the juveniles, and yet it still shows the same features - including the distinctive horns," said Dr Brusatte.

"This is the slam dunk we needed: the long-snouted tyrannosaurs were real."

Palaeontologists are now confident that Qianzhousaurus and Alioramusare part of a new subgroup of tyrannosaurs with elongated skulls.

Their discovery from Mongolia to southern China suggests these "second tier" carnivores were widely distributed, according to Prof Junchang Lu of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, a co-author on the paper.

"Although we are only starting to learn about them, the long-snouted tyrannosaurs were apparently one of the main groups of predatory dinosaurs in Asia," he said.

With these "weird" creatures now accepted as being part of a whole family, more and more of their long-snouted relatives are expected to be unearthed.

As for the riddle of Pinocchio's nose, the scientists hope to solve it via biomechanical studies of its jaw - which may hint at its feeding habits.

Continue reading the main story

CAVE BEAR

SCIENTIFIC CLASSIFICATION 

Skeleton of the cave bear

• KINGDOM : Animalia

• PHYLUM : Chordata 

• CLASS : Mammalia

• ORDER : Carnivora

• FAMILY : Ursidae

• GENUS : Ursus

• SPECIES : Ursus Spelaeus  

GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS 

• SIZE :  About 7 ft to 10 feet long.

• WEIGHT : 500 - 1000 pounds

• LIFE SPAN : 15 -20 Years

• HABITAT: Mountains  and woodlands of the Europe

• HISTORICAL EPOCH : Middle to late Pleistocene age

INTRODUCTION:  

                              Cave bear was a species of bear that come in the earth at the middle Pleistocene age, around 1,000,000 years ago, and extinct from the world at the late p]Pleistocene age, around 20,000 years ago.From the study, it is proved that this bears spend much more time in the cave than the brown bears, that is why the scientists name them cave bear.

DESCRIPTION: 

                             Cave bears had a large head with a massive canine teeth. From the cave painting it seems that they had a short ears and a pig-like face, which makes them look like the modern teddy bears. Its front legs were massive, with huge paws and claws- like today's grizzly. males are almost 900- 1100 pounds heavy, where the females are almost 500- 600 pounds heavy- that shows, the males are twice bigger than the females. from the study, its looks like they grew larger in the glaciation periods than the inter-glaciation period.

HABITAT AND RANGE :

Fossil structure of the cave bear

                            Cave bears' range stretched across Europe, from Spain to great Britain in west, Italy, Poland, parts of Germany, the Balkans, Austria, Switzerland, Croatia, Hungary, Romania and parts of Russia, including the Caucasus, and northern Iran; though no evidence were found for what we can say that the they lived in Scotland, Scandinavian or the Baltic countries, which were completely covered in extensive glacial at the time. The cave bear inhabited low mountain areas, they seems to avoid the open plains. They preferred the forest areas.

DIET :

                            From the study, it looks like they cave bears are very much herbivorous, even more than the brown bears.it dug up the roots, ate berries, etc. It may have dug up burrowing animals such as marmots. it is suggested that the cave bears may be specialized on digging up root-beds in deep glacial silt.

REPRODUCTION :

                            It is expected that cave bears had similar breeding habits to the brown bears.

THREATS :

1. Saber-tooth and other carnivores used to hunt cave bears for their foods, 
2. Many fossils were found which indicates that many sub-adult cave bears often failed to get through the hibernation. It's probably because the adults excluded them from the best feeding areas and so they failed to put on enough fat to survive winter. 
3. Human also hunt the cave bears not only for food, they hunt them for the hunting ritual or they kept the skull as the winning trophies. they also killed them for their habitat, as they can take shelter in the caves of the cave bears.

EVOLUTION :

                          It is thought that the cave bears were came from the Plio-Pleistocene Etruscan bears(Ursus Etruscus) who lived in the earth from, 5.3 million years ago to 10,000 years ago. The immediate precursor of cave bears were most probably Ursus Deningeri.

EXTINCTION : 

Human hunting cave bear

                          The extinction of the cave bears were very controversial, and very mysterious, it is not happened for a single factor, a complex set factor happened, for the studies of different scientist, we can conclude, the main causes are these-

1. Human hunts too much cave bears that leads them to their extinction.
2. Climate change is also a heavy factor, at the time of the beginning of the ice age cave bears might not adopted that climate change. and gone extinct. 
3. At the beginning of the ice age there was a huge food crisis, that leads the cave bears in starvation and also the predators killed too much cave bears for food.
4. Some scientist thought that at the time of the beginning of the ice age, cave bears were attacked by some virus and bacteria, that caused their extinction.  

                       Though my personal view is the cave bears not gone extinct, at the beginning of the ice age or before the beginning of the ice age, a group of these cave bears started to migrate to the north, and evolved into polar bears, read my this article THE EVOLUTION OF POLAR BEAR

REFERENCE :

1.  FATE OF THE CAVE BEAR by Andrew curry
2. CAVE BEAR by Bob Strauss
3. Huge Cave Bears: When and Why They Disappeared from livescience staff
4. cave bear Wikipedia
5. cave bear  BBC science

MYSTERIOUS COSMIC IMPACT CAUSES THE EXTINCTION OF THE WOOLLY MAMMOTHS??

                                           Woolly mammoths may have died as a result of the climate change following a major cosmic impact near the end of the Ice Age. A catastrophic event in Earth's history around 12,800 years ago, scorched the air, melted bedrock and altered the course of the Earth's history, researchers said. However, exactly what happened then, still unclear. Researchers say a comet may have scraped our planet's atmosphere or a meteorite may have slammed into the Earth's surface, causing global combustion. The researchers have found ample evidence to support their theory.