That's just so amazing! An entire subfamily of cats, no living members today, and with this mummy we get to see on one in the flesh and fur for the first time in thousands of years.
When I read that scientists had found a frozen saber toothed cat, my reaction was such that I think my wife seriously considered sedating me...The questions that we will be able to answer will give us a much deeper understanding of these animals.
@@RealPaleontology What are your thoughts on the more ancient Homotherium Crenatidens? From my understanding it was bigger and possibly a bit more solidly built. Was it doing something different or more or less the same thing just on a potentially bigger scale?
It’s phenomenal that we get a window into how this animal actually looked. It’s a shame we don’t have an adult, but we can still learn so much from the club. It’s also very heartening to see that our current reconstruction of homotherium at least seems to be very close to how it actually looks like, which means that our other reconstructions using similar techniques just gained another level of validity as well. I also prefer your theory as to how the Homotherium hunted, especially since this technique would not limit them to juvenile mammoths or bison but perhaps open the door to adult mammoths or early rhinos. Modern rhinos tend to be flighty and aggressive, even though they are very rarely preyed upon, and this makes a lot of sense if it is a leftover trait from millions of years of predation by specialized sabertooth predators
@@RealPaleontologywithout a shadow of a doubt. Also mr wroe do you plan to do a video on the large predatory Hyainailourids like megistotherium or any of the earlier superstars of the Cenozoic like the entelodonts nimravids and sebecids?
Thanks so much for this episode!! And a crazy thing about the homeotherm mummy: that paper was published on my birthday, so that was a nice surprise. Especially since it just happens to be one of my favorite extinct carnivores, the reason being that I'm a runner myself so I find it the most relatable group of cats.
This is off the subject, but I think folks would enjoy it: Steven Spielberg pointed out that since dinosaurs have four toes, they live in an octal world rather than a decimal world. This can be proven by playing songs on flute that a specific bird likes. Play the same song for the same bird several times so the bird knows how the song goes and listen for the bird to cheep in where he wants a rhythmic accent. You have to zero in on one specific bird and ignore all others, but the bird catches on. This works with wild birds as well as tame ones. I have pet long-tailed finches. I play simple flutes, violin, and cello. Often when practicing, all the birds will keep silent except one, who takes the avian solo part of the song. One way to prove this is happening is to listen to where in the music the bird cheeps, play the same song again and the cheeps will be in the same part of the music.They have a much better interpretation of musical phrasing than a human has, and they fly in 2/4 rhythm so they seem to enjoy odd rhythms like 3/4, 5/4, & 9/8 for artistic expression. (Try it, it works consistently, and just accept that dinosaurs grasp art!) The thing about octal numbering is that by counting on their toes, birds can directly convert to binary arithmetic while a decimal creature (us) must maintain a table look up for binary conversion and mathematical calculation. Octal is half hexadecimal. Birds can count, and they often do. Dinosaurs could count, and they sang, and it could be actual music. The largest bird I was able to sing with was a turkey. We understand about 45 calls turkeys make. I mention them because there are videos on how we humans can make the specific calls in turkey language and what they mean. A gobble gobble phrase book, if you will. Those exist. My birds can see my TV. I played UA-cam videos of their species. It took them about 3 weeks to learn the birds they were watching didn't have a back behind the TV. But they learned. Now, it seems I might have created a monster. When they want to watch TV, they will land on the TV and shout. If I'm watching a show and don't want to stop they will all shout loud enough that I miss dialog, give up, and play them a video. I've tried to teach them to associate certain sounds with things I want them to tell me, like that their hard boiled egg cup is empty. The tricky thing is that each birds uses a different call to mean the same thing. There's also the issue of what's important to a tiny dinosaur isn't the same as what a giant mammal feels is important.
Very imaginative say! But to be honest I see my job as doing my best to distill the published science into a format that curious nonprofessional can understand. And if there is nothing published on it there's nothing that I can really say........
I've thought of your response over a couple of days. I want to try to explain my hypothesis, test it by experimentation, analyze the results, present my findings, and show how the experiment is reproducible. That's a paper, I believe. Hypothesis: birds count in octal rather than decimal so we miss understanding how they count, which appears to be on their 4 toes. Previous experiments on birds number sense involved crows and eagles sensing the movements of numbers of people to see how high they could count, which seems to be around five for crows. I propose that to understand how birds count, you must present the birds with something birds are interested in counting. I propose music, and musical beats, played on live instruments, as the birds have memory, understand that a recording is identical every time it's played and soon lose interest while live human musicians will respond, perhaps unconsciously, to vocal input from a bird singing with a live musician. I have 18 long tailed finches, Poephilia acuticauda, that fly free in my apartment. I have about 30-40 folk flutes and regularly play for audiences so I practice songs quite frequently. One bird isolated from others will often cheep on a song that it knows in the same place every time the song is performed. Switching from flute to cello or violin doesn't affect where the bird cheeps in the song, so the bird's partita is not based on absolute pitch or waveform, but it may be affected by relative pitch. Normally a human tries to play in tune so that's an aspect I haven't tested. What I have tested is dragging tempo. If the bird is performing his part with a human who begins to drag tempo the bird will advance his cheeps relative to the human the same way another human musician will try to do. To test this hypothesis further, a violinist was brought in often enough that the birds became accustomed to her and her violin and then when the bird began to participate in the violin player's performance enough she could hear the bird augment her performance positively, she became somewhat frightened at "magic" and had to be counseled to just accept the bird as she would accept a human drummer. The birds are able to cheep in the same place in a song with each repetition when the song is 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, and odd rhythms like 5/8 & 11/8-13/8 (krivo-sadovsko horo) In 4/4 & 2/4 songs, the birds cheeps seldom occur on the down beat. One thing they seem to like to do is cheep about once every 5 beats in an 8 beat phrase. It's just easier to accept that the birds have a subtle understanding of musical phrasing than it is to analyze just exactly what they're doing. But they do seem to handle 8-beat musical phrases quite well. I'm not sure if quantifying this experiment to prove the hypothesis is actually the right way to go. It seems to be easier to get a bird and a human to perform together, and teach the human it's possible, and very rewarding. Many of us have mammalian pets, but they never engage with human music in the complex manner that birds are capable of. They can't count as high as birds can.
Steve, I’d love for you to do an episode on Barbourofelis, the monstrous yet often overlooked nimravid. From my (bias) understanding, these animals were as incredibly stocky as the most powerful saber-toothed cats-even more so than Smilodon populator and potentially exceeding Xenosmilus in robustness too. With semi-plantigrade feet and exceptional forearm mobility, Barbourofelis was built for power. Its carnassial teeth were unusually large-an impressive feature in their own right, overshadowed by its massive “dirk” teeth. Additionally, its upper and lower incisors were far more protuding than those of their distant dirk-toothed cat counterparts. Its skull was also strangely robust compared to Smilodon fatalis. A 2024 study by Figueirido et al. found that Barbourofelis’ stoutly built skull could withstand significant stress in various prey-killing scenarios, significantly surpassing S. fatalis in this regard. If I’m not mistaken, its jaw muscle attachments suggest a tremendous bite force-especially when compared to other dirk-toothed predators. To top it off, a protective chin for their canines - this is almost likely someone designed the perfect sabretooth mammal. Surely, the largest Barbourofelis, estimated at around 300 kg, must have been one of the top superpredators of the cenozoic. Considering its extreme robustness-potentially surpassing Xenosmilus of similar weight-its immense bite force, and the added protection for its dirk teeth, Barbourofelis could rank among the most formidable mammalian predators in history. What are your thoughts mate?
I don't even know Mauricio Anton personally, but I've read/seen so many of his works that when I heard of the cub, one of my first thoughts was how excited Mr. Anton must be!
Observations: This was the Eurasian Homotherium species. With a little luck and lots of work the Russians can clone this find for Pleistocene Park. Second, this animal was a uniform dark brown. I am going for low-light predator here. Maybe this allowed it to co-exist with Lions. Three, canines were broader and double serrated as compared to Smiladon. The thumb was perhaps even relatively stronger. It hunted young mammoths. So jumping and holding the flank of the prey while severing the leg biceps and so disabling it are not out of the question. The hunters would not have been in extreme danger doing this. Being a pack animal, the pack could have moved in and dispatched the prey at their leisure at that point.
Honestly? A bit of a sour opinion here. I do think bringing back Homotherium is a good idea for the matters of ecosystem restoration. But FOR Right now that is its ecosystem doesn't exist. As of right now what is an atempt at restoration the Mammoth steppe is still void of the one food source for Homotherium, Mammoth sure there are horse, bision, elk, moose reindeer and certian breeds of wild cattle, its still void of Mammoth. With out Mammoth they'll be stuck in a limbo of captivity where it couldn't be released untill a possible cloned mammoth population reached a stability in population. Or possibly worse for the species, brought into a world where it cannot expand out of the park with out risk of coming into contact with humans and their live stock almost constantly. For example, as we are currently trying to bring back the woolly mammoth, maybe not bringing back one of their main predators that are specialized to hunt them while the one other animal that was specialized to hunt mammoth that still roams around IE us as humans are likely going to pay top dollar to hunt mammoth when a breeding population is established. And therefore making a predator for Mammoths not necessary and or detrimental for a long time. As well as trying to restore the Mammoth population in the first place. The other problem is that A possible Homotherium, would need a surrogate mother for gestation and a main embryo donor. Which makes that complicated as it doesn't have any close relatives besides possibly clouded leopard and still that's a big Strech. But more likely a lion or a tiger would be used. And still it'd likely corrupt the genome enough where A it wouldn't be a machairodont possibly a mutant and not genetically viable for delivering offspring and if it could a population would be really inbred for a very long time. And B, It'd likely be a population that'd constantly be in conflict with human's. Within the Realm of Aisa beyond the park in the future possibly 50 to 60 years beyond the point of release within its boundries it'd start going after animals simlar to what it ate twelve thousand years ago. Large Equines and bovids not just Mammoth, and would likely be inconflict with humans and the Siberian tiger as well as wolves and bears. However normal for such a creature, it'll absloutely be a problem for the endangered population of Siberian tiger. So really its a matter of it could fit its self within a niche within the already strained ecosystem which has been caused by humans in the long term once it expands its range beyond the mammoth. Or would it be relegated to captivity being something to gawk at, or used by rich folks as a sort of toy. Like tigers in the US state of texas.
@@Glumbobumbo I hear you. And there are other good rational arguments against bringing back this and other extinct beasts. But the child in me is just busting to see it.
@@Glumbobumbo Humans, not "climate change" are responsible for the extermination of all the Pleistocen fauna. We have a moral obligation to restore this error.
@@RealPaleontology I couldn't agree more. I'd adore to see one in the flesh. Just that with younger generations coming up and taking the lead on our scientific and making things a soon to be reality such as De Extinction. I feel as if the ethical concerns should be said. And to bring back a creature or even a facsimile of a creature to just be a zoo or even entertainment animal seems....Cruel. And it'd be just that stuck in a limbo of being brought back into the wild to its Native habitat because it doesn't exist, atleast in a large scale. For example, the Thylacine is a predator that is been a hot topic for de-extinction because it has native prey and possibly invasive prey still exists within its once native range, for Homotherium that wouldn't be the case. It'd be a case of a super predator highly specialized for large animals that don't exist any more. Suck in a introductory limbo untill the Mammoth has a stable population within a well aud 100 to even 200 years or even longer.
Scimitar king ruling the Plio-Pleistocene steppes. From your description of Homotherium hunting mode, I can conclude it should have been an Allosaur of cats.
@@RealPaleontologyAdditionally, Allosaurids were evolutionary more successful only because they were atound much longer than Trex assuming smilodon populator can be called the trex equivalent of sabertooths
Many thanks for this interesting video, which was full of surprises. Today, the only truly fast running, sprinting cat is the cheetah but I think that in the not too distant past, there were several species of sprinting cats (as well as long-distance-endurance-running cats such as Homotherium). Could you please do one of these next? Preferably the North American running puma MIRACINONYX!
Here's the rub and absolutely unbelievable factoid. they didn't know what species it was (wolf, bear, cat)..."Paleontologist Valery Plotnikov reached into an industrial freezer to retrieve a Styrofoam box and lifted the lid. Inside, curled up into a ball as if comfortably napping, was a brown, furry creature resembling nothing alive on the planet today. "We initially thought it was a cave wolf, or a bear of some sort," said Plotnikov, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences branch in Yakutsk, capital of Russia's Sakha Republic, or Yakutia. "But its teeth don't match, and it has fewer toes." The animal had been dead for thousands of years, but it was discovered almost perfectly preserved in the Siberian permafrost. It has not yet been dated by scientists, but Plotnikov estimates that it may have been frozen more than 50,000 years ago, which would make it one of the oldest finds analyzed by his laboratory. "But the as-yet-undated brown-furred animal found last summer still poses a mystery, and Dalen plans a return trip to Yakutsk in August to take samples so he can study the creature's DNA at his lab in Stockholm. "From the photos I've seen, it looks like a cat of some sort," he said. "But we can't be sure."😳😁
@@RealPaleontology There is an article on the radio free europe/ radio liberty website which also includes a stunning photograph. The article also discusses the mammoth ivory trade and how this fossil was actually found.
It'd be interesting to see the forebearer of the puma. So many hyper carnivores of North America are stunning, but it was the puma that emerged as the king of the predatory mountain with phenomenal range, adaptability, and doing it all as an independent operator. The big cat that's not a "big cat".
My personal theory about sabertooth cats when pursuing prey they could have utilized the super sized claws on average outsized lions and tigers, so maybe during pursuits, they would have tred to preserve their canines by slashing the hind limbs or flanks of prey forcing them to trip and fall over allowing them to dogpile it and deliver several bites to fleshy soft spots causing massive blood loss.
@@RealPaleontology Yeah. One day, not right now though, hopefully it will be cloned back from extinction and reintroduced to Eurasia in some nature reserves, including Pleistocene Park in Siberia. 😊
Could’ve their dewclaws also played a role, like in cheetahs? Perhaps using its dewclaws in a similar fashion to how canines use their jaws to hold onto prey. Maybe it was a combination of tripping/holding the prey, not necessarily grappling with it, but preventing further escape after a long chase. Then with the prey restrained, the multiple shear bites come into play.
I don't think the sabertooth cats really bit their prey, so they didn't need to have a strong bite. They probably stabbed their prey with their saberteeth, driven by the powerful neck muscles. That would also help in avoiding damage to their teeth, as they were not really locked on to a struggling large animal when killing, like lions are.
This cat,according to your map 1:42 had a very broad climatic distribution, more so than smilodon and other lion variants. Given that Homotherium appears to be a highly climatically adaptable genus it seems that it should have been able to persist in East Africa to the present day, as Africa still retains some of its megafauna.?
Have you heard of the cryptid the Ennedi tiger from highlands of central/east Africa? No solid proof of their existence, but still quite interesting of course. It is strange and unfortunate that no members of this felid survived till modern day despite being so widespread and so adaptable, with many species living at the same time.
@ Yes, very interesting! You’d almost have to say there’s some truth in these sightings but like the Thylacine, supposedly sighted over the years between Tasmania and PNG without a shred of solid evidence beyond foot prints, it may just as well be another cryptid. I find the description of the Eneddi tiger’s short tail more compelling than its long fangs
8263, that’s right. And if we accept the proposition of Meachen et al. 2017, then all specimens previously referred to H. serum are in fact Homotherium latidens, meaning that Homotherium serum no longer exists as a species. Ditto with respect to the contemporaneous European species of Homotherium.
I still don’t understand how we find so few sabertoothed cats with broken teeth. Snapped canine teeth are common even in zoo born big cats. Biting prey as it runs seems awful risky. Also thank you for sharing the news. Sad as it is to see the little squished cub, that is a cool find.
@leoncaw326 good question. I don't know if any studies have been done on this, but my guess is that canines I'm unlikely to be broken in the Hunt or the kill. Cheek teeth are more likely to be broken while eating especially if trying to crack bone
I can see what you mean by homotherium being dog like. So Im guessing it was fast and ran its prey down as opposed to Smilidon milions of year before ambushing prey. So why did homotherium go exctinct?
Yep that's the million dollar question. Ultimately though it's most likely to come down to pray availability and density. We know that there was major climate change at around the time it went extinct. And certainly the arrival of humans probably didn't help!
So I know its primarily a younger specimen in question from a far northern range. But would or even could it give light on the coat pattern of adult Homotherium?
@@Glumbobumbo Considering how much they mimicked canids at least in pack behavior and hunting strategies, i would like to play a bit of devils advocate and suggest they may have mimicked arctic and timber wolf coloration at least in northern euresia/ latitudes. arctic wolf cubs are black or brown but the adults are pure white. timber wolves have similar colors as cubs but adults vary from grey, brown, black and shades of all three. plus ambush hunting wasn't really a priority since they chased their prey so camouflage wouldn't have been a big deal for both prey and competition as long as they hunted in packs. the central euresian steppe and african homotheres coloration would have been more like lions in my opinion though there could be subtle variations. i hope the cub's DNA yields meaningful answers.
I have 2 questions question 1.did homotherium And other saber tooth had lips to hide its large saber canines or no and question 2. when Triceratops were alive did triceratops horns grew from around the eyes sockets and connected to the nasal horn like a armor for the faces or grew from just the forehead per say above the eyes sockets like a jackson chameleon.
For Hormotherium the latest research suggests that the canine teeth were not visible when the mouth was closed. I actually mentioned this in the video and there's a reconstruction there too. Re Triceratops the horns grow independently is I understand it.
@ Thank you and one more question so they found a baby homotherium so when they were full grown what color and pattern did it look like I said that because when baby wild cats grow up they start to change color and their patterns.
My freind has a question what was triceratops personality and are they pugnacious animals and if we don’t know then what do you think what personality might have had when they were alive.
8:42 Paused and read it. What causes the similarity between hyena & S. fatalis cortical strength? Would comparative bite force shed some light? Good on ye for letting me read that. 9:52 If you take a sharp, serrated knife and try to "pull back" you won't cut the meat. (Try it) You'd need to slice back & forth. Slice isn't listed as a force. Well, that explains the long, strong necks and thin canines! 12:26 none of the saber-tooth lineages could suffocate prey by biting over the mouth & nose as we see lions kill buffalo.
Thanks. Personally, I would not read too much into the proposed similarity regarding cortical bone distribution and thickness. And to be comparative bite force provides a red flag straight up. Smilodon has a relatively weak bite force for its size (and a relatively small head). Bite force in the hyena has been wildly overblown (see my previous episode of this) but it is still well above ‘average’ for its size. In their modelling, Figueirido et al don’t account for differences in body mass, i.e., allometry. Nor do they include the lower jaw and fully reconstruct the jaw adducting musculature. You can check out mine and McHenry’s 2007 paper on Smilodon if you want a bit more background here.
And I agree it would be near impossible for a sabre cat to apply the suffocating bite over the nose and mouth. My real point is that they also lacked the bite force needed to affect a suffocating bite to the neck of a really big prey animal.
@@RealPaleontology from the feet it looks like a very big cheetah with snowshoes. Like a cheetah it needed those retractable dewclaws for tripping it's prey.
Homotherium has a long, rather square face despite being a cat. It seems a lot of sabretooth cats are drawn incorrectly in older reconstructions, where they are depicted with flatter more typical cat faces.
Canids and spotted hyenas hunt in a similar manner to the way he proposes homotherium hunted. It's actually a pretty quick way to kill prey which in itself reduces the chances of injury.
Well not completely safely but then no approach 100% safe. But it's better equipped to do so then other species which are alive today which do a similar thing
@@RealPaleontology But they have fragile blade like teeth compared to hyenas and canids and a weak bite most likely. So how would it be able to safely engage its jaws without immobilizing its prey first?
@@surgeonsergio6839you are referring to dirk tooths like smilodon. Homotheres had shorter fangsbut they were more robust and capable of handling stress like modern boting cars. mot just that they had massive serrated incisors and a powerful neck (as themy indicates). So they were well armed and suiyex
I'm thinking as a pursuit predator it would make sense for Homotherium to bite ate it's prey's belly during a chase and have them follow harass and bite at them till they bleed out and can't run anymore. No bones to break a tooth on in the belly either.
@@RealPaleontologyI think they are talking about the company who wants to resurrect wooly mammoths and thylacines, but I'm sure they have already asked for a DNA sample.
To me very serious questuons. 1. Should be sabertooth cats really considered as cats at all ? Sabertooths and classic cats as we know them have more than 20 million years of evolutional separation. The term sabertooth tiger" is outdated, but still in general use, which is completely wrong; to me even the term "cat" as correct one is highly questionable. 2. And also the classification inside sabretooths themselves; You mentioned that Homotherium and Smilodon have some 18 million years of evolutionary separation. Should be both simplifed inside same family of "sabertooth" or "sabertooth cats" in general ? The animals are obviously totally different and even presenters mix their images when they are talking about them. To me it seems like "talking about the tapir and showing a horse".
there are more muscles that operate the jaw it would be feasible they came into play more depending the process as with smiley reaching bit ,, interesting regards evolution choices made forced or driven by taste preferences the hot blood flushing into the mouth or the struggling asphyxiation as the life ebbs away the taste of nectar or the taste of life fluids , its a a great find
@@RealPaleontology haha yes but its may be a little unkind to the survival dominated creatures its more of a calorie thing possible driven by pressures from the pride & scavenging,ect
@@billyskinner9382 for sure, like arctic and timber wolves since camouflage was not a priority (for timber wolves). arctic wolves definitely blend in snowy surroundins, but they are both endurance hunters like homotherium was
This is the most amazing discovery in permafrost yet, it is not only a extinct species but an extinct lineage! I hope we can get DNA from it, would clarify a lot of things in Felidae. Do you think adults were dark orange like the pup found?
@promaster4758 Since they mimicked canids at least in pack behavior and hunting strategies, i would like to play a bit of devils advocate and suggest they may have copied arctic and timber wolf coloration (one example) at least in northern euresia/ latitudes. arctic wolf cubs are black or brown but the adults are pure white. timber wolves have similar colors as cubs but adults vary from grey, brown, black and shades of all three. plus ambush hunting wasn't really a priority since they chased their prey so camouflage wouldn't have been a big deal for both prey and competition as long as they hunted in packs. the central euresian steppe and african homotheres coloration would have been more like lions in my opinion though there could be subtle variations or more drastic ones considering its vast range. i hope the cub's DNA yields meaningful answers and also melanistic specimens would definitely not be out of question at least in areas with more tree cover.
That's just so amazing! An entire subfamily of cats, no living members today, and with this mummy we get to see on one in the flesh and fur for the first time in thousands of years.
It is truly amazing
This is genuinely amazing. I never thought I would get to see a sabre-toothed cat like this.
It certainly is a wonderful find
And yes I will definitely do the American 'cheetah', super interesting animal!
Amazing 🤩
Never in my lifetime have I ever thought I would ever see the mummy of a scimitar-toothed cat. This is truly a one of a kind find.
It is a wonderful thing
When I read that scientists had found a frozen saber toothed cat, my reaction was such that I think my wife seriously considered sedating me...The questions that we will be able to answer will give us a much deeper understanding of these animals.
Yes indeed there is much more to come
@@RealPaleontology What are your thoughts on the more ancient Homotherium Crenatidens? From my understanding it was bigger and possibly a bit more solidly built. Was it doing something different or more or less the same thing just on a potentially bigger scale?
It’s phenomenal that we get a window into how this animal actually looked. It’s a shame we don’t have an adult, but we can still learn so much from the club. It’s also very heartening to see that our current reconstruction of homotherium at least seems to be very close to how it actually looks like, which means that our other reconstructions using similar techniques just gained another level of validity as well. I also prefer your theory as to how the Homotherium hunted, especially since this technique would not limit them to juvenile mammoths or bison but perhaps open the door to adult mammoths or early rhinos. Modern rhinos tend to be flighty and aggressive, even though they are very rarely preyed upon, and this makes a lot of sense if it is a leftover trait from millions of years of predation by specialized sabertooth predators
Yes it's pretty neat! And I suspect we ultimately will be able to find out much more from its DNA
Thank goodness for frozen locations. Finding soft tissue always helps to clear up some mysteries.
It surely does but unfortunately of course it is so very rare
What an amazing time to be alive (for us).
Sure is
Homotherium bros we’re so back
It's a very cool cat
@@RealPaleontologywithout a shadow of a doubt. Also mr wroe do you plan to do a video on the large predatory Hyainailourids like megistotherium or any of the earlier superstars of the Cenozoic like the entelodonts nimravids and sebecids?
Thanks so much for this episode!! And a crazy thing about the homeotherm mummy: that paper was published on my birthday, so that was a nice surprise. Especially since it just happens to be one of my favorite extinct carnivores, the reason being that I'm a runner myself so I find it the most relatable group of cats.
A thanks! And happy belated birthday!
@@RealPaleontology Thanks!
Maybe you're the reincarnation of that cub?
well its possible the color preserved in the mummy was different in life, these specimens often have their color distorted after years in the ice
yes they made that clear in the paper
This is off the subject, but I think folks would enjoy it: Steven Spielberg pointed out that since dinosaurs have four toes, they live in an octal world rather than a decimal world. This can be proven by playing songs on flute that a specific bird likes. Play the same song for the same bird several times so the bird knows how the song goes and listen for the bird to cheep in where he wants a rhythmic accent. You have to zero in on one specific bird and ignore all others, but the bird catches on. This works with wild birds as well as tame ones. I have pet long-tailed finches. I play simple flutes, violin, and cello. Often when practicing, all the birds will keep silent except one, who takes the avian solo part of the song. One way to prove this is happening is to listen to where in the music the bird cheeps, play the same song again and the cheeps will be in the same part of the music.They have a much better interpretation of musical phrasing than a human has, and they fly in 2/4 rhythm so they seem to enjoy odd rhythms like 3/4, 5/4, & 9/8 for artistic expression. (Try it, it works consistently, and just accept that dinosaurs grasp art!)
The thing about octal numbering is that by counting on their toes, birds can directly convert to binary arithmetic while a decimal creature (us) must maintain a table look up for binary conversion and mathematical calculation. Octal is half hexadecimal. Birds can count, and they often do. Dinosaurs could count, and they sang, and it could be actual music.
The largest bird I was able to sing with was a turkey. We understand about 45 calls turkeys make. I mention them because there are videos on how we humans can make the specific calls in turkey language and what they mean. A gobble gobble phrase book, if you will. Those exist.
My birds can see my TV. I played UA-cam videos of their species. It took them about 3 weeks to learn the birds they were watching didn't have a back behind the TV. But they learned. Now, it seems I might have created a monster. When they want to watch TV, they will land on the TV and shout. If I'm watching a show and don't want to stop they will all shout loud enough that I miss dialog, give up, and play them a video.
I've tried to teach them to associate certain sounds with things I want them to tell me, like that their hard boiled egg cup is empty. The tricky thing is that each birds uses a different call to mean the same thing. There's also the issue of what's important to a tiny dinosaur isn't the same as what a giant mammal feels is important.
Very imaginative say! But to be honest I see my job as doing my best to distill the published science into a format that curious nonprofessional can understand. And if there is nothing published on it there's nothing that I can really say........
I've thought of your response over a couple of days. I want to try to explain my hypothesis, test it by experimentation, analyze the results, present my findings, and show how the experiment is reproducible.
That's a paper, I believe.
Hypothesis: birds count in octal rather than decimal so we miss understanding how they count, which appears to be on their 4 toes.
Previous experiments on birds number sense involved crows and eagles sensing the movements of numbers of people to see how high they could count, which seems to be around five for crows.
I propose that to understand how birds count, you must present the birds with something birds are interested in counting.
I propose music, and musical beats, played on live instruments, as the birds have memory, understand that a recording is identical every time it's played and soon lose interest while live human musicians will respond, perhaps unconsciously, to vocal input from a bird singing with a live musician.
I have 18 long tailed finches, Poephilia acuticauda, that fly free in my apartment. I have about 30-40 folk flutes and regularly play for audiences so I practice songs quite frequently. One bird isolated from others will often cheep on a song that it knows in the same place every time the song is performed. Switching from flute to cello or violin doesn't affect where the bird cheeps in the song, so the bird's partita is not based on absolute pitch or waveform, but it may be affected by relative pitch. Normally a human tries to play in tune so that's an aspect I haven't tested.
What I have tested is dragging tempo. If the bird is performing his part with a human who begins to drag tempo the bird will advance his cheeps relative to the human the same way another human musician will try to do.
To test this hypothesis further, a violinist was brought in often enough that the birds became accustomed to her and her violin and then when the bird began to participate in the violin player's performance enough she could hear the bird augment her performance positively, she became somewhat frightened at "magic" and had to be counseled to just accept the bird as she would accept a human drummer.
The birds are able to cheep in the same place in a song with each repetition when the song is 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 6/8, and odd rhythms like 5/8 & 11/8-13/8 (krivo-sadovsko horo)
In 4/4 & 2/4 songs, the birds cheeps seldom occur on the down beat. One thing they seem to like to do is cheep about once every 5 beats in an 8 beat phrase. It's just easier to accept that the birds have a subtle understanding of musical phrasing than it is to analyze just exactly what they're doing.
But they do seem to handle 8-beat musical phrases quite well.
I'm not sure if quantifying this experiment to prove the hypothesis is actually the right way to go. It seems to be easier to get a bird and a human to perform together, and teach the human it's possible, and very rewarding.
Many of us have mammalian pets, but they never engage with human music in the complex manner that birds are capable of. They can't count as high as birds can.
Interesting, I'd like to see it tested.
Steve, I’d love for you to do an episode on Barbourofelis, the monstrous yet often overlooked nimravid. From my (bias) understanding, these animals were as incredibly stocky as the most powerful saber-toothed cats-even more so than Smilodon populator and potentially exceeding Xenosmilus in robustness too.
With semi-plantigrade feet and exceptional forearm mobility, Barbourofelis was built for power. Its carnassial teeth were unusually large-an impressive feature in their own right, overshadowed by its massive “dirk” teeth. Additionally, its upper and lower incisors were far more protuding than those of their distant dirk-toothed cat counterparts. Its skull was also strangely robust compared to Smilodon fatalis.
A 2024 study by Figueirido et al. found that Barbourofelis’ stoutly built skull could withstand significant stress in various prey-killing scenarios, significantly surpassing S. fatalis in this regard. If I’m not mistaken, its jaw muscle attachments suggest a tremendous bite force-especially when compared to other dirk-toothed predators.
To top it off, a protective chin for their canines - this is almost likely someone designed the perfect sabretooth mammal. Surely, the largest Barbourofelis, estimated at around 300 kg, must have been one of the top superpredators of the cenozoic. Considering its extreme robustness-potentially surpassing Xenosmilus of similar weight-its immense bite force, and the added protection for its dirk teeth, Barbourofelis could rank among the most formidable mammalian predators in history. What are your thoughts mate?
Yep I will be doing this one and soon
interesting, they are essentially wolf-cats
I reckon. With a bit of shark thrown in for good measure.
I don't even know Mauricio Anton personally, but I've read/seen so many of his works that when I heard of the cub, one of my first thoughts was how excited Mr. Anton must be!
@@AnnaMarianne ha yeah there's no doubt he is very excited!
I wish we had a figure of this cat
Not sure I know what you mean?
Observations: This was the Eurasian Homotherium species. With a little luck and lots of work the Russians can clone this find for Pleistocene Park. Second, this animal was a uniform dark brown. I am going for low-light predator here. Maybe this allowed it to co-exist with Lions. Three, canines were broader and double serrated as compared to Smiladon. The thumb was perhaps even relatively stronger. It hunted young mammoths. So jumping and holding the flank of the prey while severing the leg biceps and so disabling it are not out of the question. The hunters would not have been in extreme danger doing this. Being a pack animal, the pack could have moved in and dispatched the prey at their leisure at that point.
Sure would love to see a clone!
Honestly? A bit of a sour opinion here. I do think bringing back Homotherium is a good idea for the matters of ecosystem restoration. But FOR Right now that is its ecosystem doesn't exist. As of right now what is an atempt at restoration the Mammoth steppe is still void of the one food source for Homotherium, Mammoth sure there are horse, bision, elk, moose reindeer and certian breeds of wild cattle, its still void of Mammoth. With out Mammoth they'll be stuck in a limbo of captivity where it couldn't be released untill a possible cloned mammoth population reached a stability in population.
Or possibly worse for the species, brought into a world where it cannot expand out of the park with out risk of coming into contact with humans and their live stock almost constantly.
For example, as we are currently trying to bring back the woolly mammoth, maybe not bringing back one of their main predators that are specialized to hunt them while the one other animal that was specialized to hunt mammoth that still roams around IE us as humans are likely going to pay top dollar to hunt mammoth when a breeding population is established. And therefore making a predator for Mammoths not necessary and or detrimental for a long time. As well as trying to restore the Mammoth population in the first place.
The other problem is that
A possible Homotherium, would need a surrogate mother for gestation and a main embryo donor. Which makes that complicated as it doesn't have any close relatives besides possibly clouded leopard and still that's a big Strech. But more likely a lion or a tiger would be used. And still it'd likely corrupt the genome enough where A it wouldn't be a machairodont possibly a mutant and not genetically viable for delivering offspring and if it could a population would be really inbred for a very long time. And B, It'd likely be a population that'd constantly be in conflict with human's.
Within the Realm of Aisa beyond the park in the future possibly 50 to 60 years beyond the point of release within its boundries it'd start going after animals simlar to what it ate twelve thousand years ago.
Large Equines and bovids not just Mammoth, and would likely be inconflict with humans and the Siberian tiger as well as wolves and bears. However normal for such a creature, it'll absloutely be a problem for the endangered population of Siberian tiger.
So really its a matter of it could fit its self within a niche within the already strained ecosystem which has been caused by humans in the long term once it expands its range beyond the mammoth. Or would it be relegated to captivity being something to gawk at, or used by rich folks as a sort of toy. Like tigers in the US state of texas.
@@Glumbobumbo I hear you. And there are other good rational arguments against bringing back this and other extinct beasts. But the child in me is just busting to see it.
@@Glumbobumbo Humans, not "climate change" are responsible for the extermination of all the Pleistocen fauna. We have a moral obligation to restore this error.
@@RealPaleontology I couldn't agree more. I'd adore to see one in the flesh. Just that with younger generations coming up and taking the lead on our scientific and making things a soon to be reality such as De Extinction. I feel as if the ethical concerns should be said.
And to bring back a creature or even a facsimile of a creature to just be a zoo or even entertainment animal seems....Cruel. And it'd be just that stuck in a limbo of being brought back into the wild to its Native habitat because it doesn't exist, atleast in a large scale.
For example, the Thylacine is a predator that is been a hot topic for de-extinction because it has native prey and possibly invasive prey still exists within its once native range, for Homotherium that wouldn't be the case. It'd be a case of a super predator highly specialized for large animals that don't exist any more. Suck in a introductory limbo untill the Mammoth has a stable population within a well aud 100 to even 200 years or even longer.
Scimitar king ruling the Plio-Pleistocene steppes. From your description of Homotherium hunting mode, I can conclude it should have been an Allosaur of cats.
Yes I think that's a pretty good analogy
@@RealPaleontologyAdditionally, Allosaurids were evolutionary more successful only because they were atound much longer than Trex assuming smilodon populator can be called the trex equivalent of sabertooths
Amazing discovery, especially after finding this channel and making me interested in the Saber tooths again
Hey thank you! And yep sure is an amazing discovery.
I wonder how much can we infer of the coloration of and adult based on the frozen cub.
Good point. As I understand it we can't infer too much. But we can be pretty sure that the adults weren't striped or spotted.
Many thanks for this interesting video, which was full of surprises. Today, the only truly fast running, sprinting cat is the cheetah but I think that in the not too distant past, there were several species of sprinting cats (as well as long-distance-endurance-running cats such as Homotherium). Could you please do one of these next? Preferably the North American running puma MIRACINONYX!
Thank you. And I think the evidence is pointing toward an endurance running rather than a sprinting kind of habit the Homotherium.
Here's the rub and absolutely unbelievable factoid. they didn't know what species it was (wolf, bear, cat)..."Paleontologist Valery Plotnikov reached into an industrial freezer to retrieve a Styrofoam box and lifted the lid. Inside, curled up into a ball as if comfortably napping, was a brown, furry creature resembling nothing alive on the planet today.
"We initially thought it was a cave wolf, or a bear of some sort," said Plotnikov, a researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences branch in Yakutsk, capital of Russia's Sakha Republic, or Yakutia. "But its teeth don't match, and it has fewer toes."
The animal had been dead for thousands of years, but it was discovered almost perfectly preserved in the Siberian permafrost. It has not yet been dated by scientists, but Plotnikov estimates that it may have been frozen more than 50,000 years ago, which would make it one of the oldest finds analyzed by his laboratory.
"But the as-yet-undated brown-furred animal found last summer still poses a mystery, and Dalen plans a return trip to Yakutsk in August to take samples so he can study the creature's DNA at his lab in Stockholm. "From the photos I've seen, it looks like a cat of some sort," he said. "But we can't be sure."😳😁
Ha! That's great! Where did you read this story?
@@RealPaleontology There is an article on the radio free europe/ radio liberty website which also includes a stunning photograph. The article also discusses the mammoth ivory trade and how this fossil was actually found.
Thanks I will chase it up
@@RealPaleontology The article date is
July 05, 2021 14:06 GMT by Matthew Luxmoore if that helps
@@z1az285 helps a lot thanks
Fascinated by this discovery.Also sternes et al released their Belgian meg specimen length 16.4m barely larger than cooper version 15 .9m
Thanks for the heads up! Can you tell me where this was published?
Svp2024 @@RealPaleontology
Svp2024 @@RealPaleontology
It'd be interesting to see the forebearer of the puma. So many hyper carnivores of North America are stunning, but it was the puma that emerged as the king of the predatory mountain with phenomenal range, adaptability, and doing it all as an independent operator. The big cat that's not a "big cat".
It's a very interesting and beautiful animal
Good candidate for cloning, bring it to pleistocene park!👍
You'd have to think it's possible
@RealPaleontology have to sequence some good DNA first, theve had this specimen since 2020 maybe they already have.
I would be on the first plane there
My personal theory about sabertooth cats when pursuing prey they could have utilized the super sized claws on average outsized lions and tigers, so maybe during pursuits, they would have tred to preserve their canines by slashing the hind limbs or flanks of prey forcing them to trip and fall over allowing them to dogpile it and deliver several bites to fleshy soft spots causing massive blood loss.
Depending on the prey I suspect that they did sometimes l use the dew claw in such a fashion. At the teeth would still be used for the final blow.
Loved the video!
Thank you!!
Wow, the first ever saber-toothed cat with its true/real fur color and patterns determined/confirmed. :)
Amazing alright!
@@RealPaleontology Yeah.
One day, not right now though, hopefully it will be cloned back from extinction and reintroduced to Eurasia in some nature reserves, including Pleistocene Park in Siberia. 😊
Could’ve their dewclaws also played a role, like in cheetahs? Perhaps using its dewclaws in a similar fashion to how canines use their jaws to hold onto prey. Maybe it was a combination of tripping/holding the prey, not necessarily grappling with it, but preventing further escape after a long chase. Then with the prey restrained, the multiple shear bites come into play.
Absolutely could have used it like a cheetah ended more ways than one.
I don't think the sabertooth cats really bit their prey, so they didn't need to have a strong bite. They probably stabbed their prey with their saberteeth, driven by the powerful neck muscles. That would also help in avoiding damage to their teeth, as they were not really locked on to a struggling large animal when killing, like lions are.
Yep most researchers are largely in agreement with you on this. It was mostly the neck muscles but the jaw muscle still do play a role
This cat,according to your map 1:42 had a very broad climatic distribution, more so than smilodon and other lion variants. Given that Homotherium appears to be a highly climatically adaptable genus it seems that it should have been able to persist in East Africa to the present day, as Africa still retains some of its megafauna.?
Yes I agree it is surprising. I'm afraid I have no easy answer for you!
Have you heard of the cryptid the Ennedi tiger from highlands of central/east Africa? No solid proof of their existence, but still quite interesting of course. It is strange and unfortunate that no members of this felid survived till modern day despite being so widespread and so adaptable, with many species living at the same time.
@ Yes, very interesting! You’d almost have to say there’s some truth in these sightings but like the Thylacine, supposedly sighted over the years between Tasmania and PNG without a shred of solid evidence beyond foot prints, it may just as well be another cryptid. I find the description of the Eneddi tiger’s short tail more compelling than its long fangs
I noticed the reconstruction at the beginning had carpal pads. I guess that will need to be update?
Yup, I reckon a lot of reconstructions have to be updated!
Wroe, the Mummified Species of Homotherium was very Chocolate Brown was "Homotherium latidens."
8263, that’s right. And if we accept the proposition of Meachen et al. 2017, then all specimens previously referred to H. serum are in fact Homotherium latidens, meaning that Homotherium serum no longer exists as a species. Ditto with respect to the contemporaneous European species of Homotherium.
Excellent video, btw!
Thanks very much
This is awesome!!!
Thanks so much!
I saw you had 999 subscribers, so allow me to be your 1000th richly deserved subscriber.
Cool thanks for that!
good job!
Thank you
I still don’t understand how we find so few sabertoothed cats with broken teeth. Snapped canine teeth are common even in zoo born big cats. Biting prey as it runs seems awful risky. Also thank you for sharing the news. Sad as it is to see the little squished cub, that is a cool find.
The FEA shows that Homotherium's canines were far less susceptible to breakage in Smilodon's.
It certainly would have had to out of its way to avoid bone though.
@@RealPaleontology Is it known if most of today's cats with broken canines damaged them during hunting or from chewing on bones?
@leoncaw326 good question. I don't know if any studies have been done on this, but my guess is that canines I'm unlikely to be broken in the Hunt or the kill. Cheek teeth are more likely to be broken while eating especially if trying to crack bone
now way, mummified sabre cat, that's sick.
Yeah awesome right
I can see what you mean by homotherium being dog like. So Im guessing it was fast and ran its prey down as opposed to Smilidon milions of year before ambushing prey. So why did homotherium go exctinct?
Yep that's the million dollar question. Ultimately though it's most likely to come down to pray availability and density. We know that there was major climate change at around the time it went extinct. And certainly the arrival of humans probably didn't help!
Would love your opinion on andrewsarchus. Obviously lots of specimens (sarcasm) so I know you'll have a lot. Still, I'd be interested.
Yet I will definitely do this beast!
So I know its primarily a younger specimen in question from a far northern range. But would or even could it give light on the coat pattern of adult Homotherium?
For sure I reckon it could, but of course for such a wide ranging species it is likely that there were differences across this vast range.
@@Glumbobumbo Considering how much they mimicked canids at least in pack behavior and hunting strategies, i would like to play a bit of devils advocate and suggest they may have mimicked arctic and timber wolf coloration at least in northern euresia/ latitudes. arctic wolf cubs are black or brown but the adults are pure white. timber wolves have similar colors as cubs but adults vary from grey, brown, black and shades of all three. plus ambush hunting wasn't really a priority since they chased their prey so camouflage wouldn't have been a big deal for both prey and competition as long as they hunted in packs. the central euresian steppe and african homotheres coloration would have been more like lions in my opinion though there could be subtle variations. i hope the cub's DNA yields meaningful answers.
I have 2 questions question 1.did homotherium And other saber tooth had lips to hide its large saber canines or no and question 2. when Triceratops were alive did triceratops horns grew from around the eyes sockets and connected to the nasal horn like a armor for the faces or grew from just the forehead per say above the eyes sockets like a jackson chameleon.
For Hormotherium the latest research suggests that the canine teeth were not visible when the mouth was closed. I actually mentioned this in the video and there's a reconstruction there too. Re Triceratops the horns grow independently is I understand it.
Thank you
@@RealPaleontology question when you said triceratops horns grow independently what do you mean by that.
I mean those above the eyes weren't connected to the one on the snout
@ Thank you and one more question so they found a baby homotherium so when they were full grown what color and pattern did it look like I said that because when baby wild cats grow up they start to change color and their patterns.
My freind has a question what was triceratops personality and are they pugnacious animals and if we don’t know then what do you think what personality might have had when they were alive.
Good question. In the short answer is yes. I do think that this animal was more likely to fight and to flee!
@I feel like they had a aurochs and honey badger like personality what do you think about my thought about that
@@Ceratopsia5 interesting!
Lumpers & splitters.
Not sure what you mean by that?
In the field of taxonomy there were lumpers & splitters.
8:42 Paused and read it. What causes the similarity between hyena & S. fatalis cortical strength? Would comparative bite force shed some light? Good on ye for letting me read that.
9:52 If you take a sharp, serrated knife and try to "pull back" you won't cut the meat. (Try it) You'd need to slice back & forth. Slice isn't listed as a force. Well, that explains the long, strong necks and thin canines!
12:26 none of the saber-tooth lineages could suffocate prey by biting over the mouth & nose as we see lions kill buffalo.
Thanks. Personally, I would not read too much into the proposed similarity regarding cortical bone distribution and thickness. And to be comparative bite force provides a red flag straight up. Smilodon has a relatively weak bite force for its size (and a relatively small head). Bite force in the hyena has been wildly overblown (see my previous episode of this) but it is still well above ‘average’ for its size. In their modelling, Figueirido et al don’t account for differences in body mass, i.e., allometry. Nor do they include the lower jaw and fully reconstruct the jaw adducting musculature. You can check out mine and McHenry’s 2007 paper on Smilodon if you want a bit more background here.
Yup, serrations don't make it easier to pull back, but they do make it easier to drive through tough fibrous material.
And I agree it would be near impossible for a sabre cat to apply the suffocating bite over the nose and mouth. My real point is that they also lacked the bite force needed to affect a suffocating bite to the neck of a really big prey animal.
@@RealPaleontology from the feet it looks like a very big cheetah with snowshoes. Like a cheetah it needed those retractable dewclaws for tripping it's prey.
@@petehoover6616 I think that's a fair comparison.
Homotherium has a long, rather square face despite being a cat. It seems a lot of sabretooth cats are drawn incorrectly in older reconstructions, where they are depicted with flatter more typical cat faces.
It really does have a most unusual shaped head for a cat
Would it really have been able to bite prey safely before completely immobilizing it?
Canids and spotted hyenas hunt in a similar manner to the way he proposes homotherium hunted. It's actually a pretty quick way to kill prey which in itself reduces the chances of injury.
Well not completely safely but then no approach 100% safe. But it's better equipped to do so then other species which are alive today which do a similar thing
Exactly. And this cat could have done a lot more damage than any dog or hyena
@@RealPaleontology But they have fragile blade like teeth compared to hyenas and canids and a weak bite most likely. So how would it be able to safely engage its jaws without immobilizing its prey first?
@@surgeonsergio6839you are referring to dirk tooths like smilodon. Homotheres had shorter fangsbut they were more robust and capable of handling stress like modern boting cars. mot just that they had massive serrated incisors and a powerful neck (as themy indicates). So they were well armed and suiyex
I'm thinking as a pursuit predator it would make sense for Homotherium to bite ate it's prey's belly during a chase and have them follow harass and bite at them till they bleed out and can't run anymore. No bones to break a tooth on in the belly either.
Sure it would absolutely avoided by hand to bone
Your close to 1000 subs. I’m 992. Now you need 4000 watch hours to be monetized. Great presentation sir! :)
Cheers mate!¡
Ha yeah, thanks for that. To be honest I don't see big money in this! But I am enjoying it.
Awesome. You said you were then you did it.
Thanks
It was a young elephant killer
At least in Texas
@@tyrannotherium7873 The favorite prey of the beringian scimitar cat was yak, followed by musk ox and reindeer.
Sounds reasonable
Thanks glad you think so
what are your thoughts on tigers being eligible for the Super Predator HOF.
I don't think there's any doubt that the tiger is a true super predator
Collosal Biosciences where are you?
Not quite sure what you mean there?
@@RealPaleontologyI think they are talking about the company who wants to resurrect wooly mammoths and thylacines, but I'm sure they have already asked for a DNA sample.
To me very serious questuons.
1. Should be sabertooth cats really considered as cats at all ?
Sabertooths and classic cats as we know them have more than 20 million years of evolutional separation. The term sabertooth tiger" is outdated, but still in general use, which is completely wrong; to me even the term "cat" as correct one is highly questionable.
2. And also the classification inside sabretooths themselves; You mentioned that Homotherium and Smilodon have some 18 million years of evolutionary separation. Should be both simplifed inside same family of "sabertooth" or "sabertooth cats" in general ? The animals are obviously totally different and even presenters mix their images when they are talking about them. To me it seems like "talking about the tapir and showing a horse".
You make an interesting point. It is a subjective call as to whether or not we place them in their own family
Any link to pumas?
No it's closest link is with dirt tooth sabertooths.
@@RealPaleontology thanks
there are more muscles that operate the jaw it would be feasible they came into play more depending the process as with smiley reaching bit ,, interesting regards evolution choices made forced or driven by taste preferences the hot blood flushing into the mouth or the struggling asphyxiation as the life ebbs away the taste of nectar or the taste of life fluids , its a a great find
Brings a whole new meaning to the term bloodthirsty...
@@RealPaleontology haha yes but its may be a little unkind to the survival dominated creatures its more of a calorie thing possible driven by pressures from the pride & scavenging,ect
Hair color might have changed over time yeah
Definitely and given its huge range there were likely a number of variants
@@billyskinner9382 for sure, like arctic and timber wolves since camouflage was not a priority (for timber wolves). arctic wolves definitely blend in snowy surroundins, but they are both endurance hunters like homotherium was
Now we can bring it back and release it into the wild 😈
Would be wonderful but I'm not sure there's a habitat for it now
You're gonna need a better mic.
I'll save up
This is the most amazing discovery in permafrost yet, it is not only a extinct species but an extinct lineage! I hope we can get DNA from it, would clarify a lot of things in Felidae. Do you think adults were dark orange like the pup found?
I think it's very hard to say what colour the adults were for sure
@promaster4758 Since they mimicked canids at least in pack behavior and hunting strategies, i would like to play a bit of devils advocate and suggest they may have copied arctic and timber wolf coloration (one example) at least in northern euresia/ latitudes. arctic wolf cubs are black or brown but the adults are pure white. timber wolves have similar colors as cubs but adults vary from grey, brown, black and shades of all three. plus ambush hunting wasn't really a priority since they chased their prey so camouflage wouldn't have been a big deal for both prey and competition as long as they hunted in packs. the central euresian steppe and african homotheres coloration would have been more like lions in my opinion though there could be subtle variations or more drastic ones considering its vast range. i hope the cub's DNA yields meaningful answers and also melanistic specimens would definitely not be out of question at least in areas with more tree cover.