Oldest big cat fossil ever found is new species
| Los Angeles
Scientists have unearthed the oldest big聽cat聽fossil yet, suggesting the predator 鈥� similar to a snow leopard 鈥� evolved in Asia and spread out.
The nearly complete skull dug up in Tibet was estimated at 4.4 million years old 鈥� older than the big聽cat remains recovered from Tanzania dating to about 3.7 million years ago, the team reported.
While the new specimen is not a direct ancestor to big聽cats聽like tigers, lions, jaguars, it is closely related to the snow leopard, said study leader Jack Tseng of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
The find was detailed in Wednesday's Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.
In 2010, Tseng and colleagues drove to the Himalayas to go fossil hunting. The team split up to cover more ground. While hiking on a mountaintop, Tseng's wife, Juan Liu, a graduate student, found a trove of scattered bones and radioed others to help collect them. As they started digging, they found a buried聽cat聽skull about the size of a large grapefruit.
By analyzing the surrounding rocks and soil, the researchers determined the skull's age.
The fossil is "convincingly older than the current record holder," said David Polly, a paleontologist at Indiana University who had no role in the study.
Polly said in an email that there's also good evidence that the big聽cat聽lived in the Tibetan plateau and there could be even older big聽cat聽fossils there to uncover.
The newest fossil had a broad forehead similar to snow leopards and its front teeth were heavily worn. It was small for a big聽cat聽鈥� probably about the size of a clouded leopard, a聽cat聽found in the rainforests of Southeast Asia that can grow to 50 pounds.
The team returned last year and excavated more聽cat聽bones including lower jaw fragments and pieces of a second skull.
The new聽cat聽species was named Panthera blytheae after Blythe Haaga, whose parents are donors of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Tseng was a graduate student at the University of Southern California and worked at the museum during the fossil discovery.
In an email, Anjali Goswami of University College London called the聽cat聽skull a "very significant find" and "magnificently preserved" that can help scientists learn more about modern snow leopards.
