SCIENCE LAB SPECIAL : SABER -TOOTHED CATS

 

'' Kitty with a bite '' : In 2020, prospectors seeking mammoth tusks in eastern Siberia found a bundle of fur protruding from the icy bank of the Badyarikha River.

The diggers knew they were looking at something rare : the Ice Age mummy of a cat cub.

Scientists have studied mummified animals that roamed the steppes in the Pleistocene 30,000 years ago. These have included titans like mammoths and woolly rhinoceroses, as well as small mammals like the cubs of wolverines and cave lions.

But when the prospectors took their little find to the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, researchers there were delighted : They had just been handed the first-ever mummy of a saber-toothed cat.

The find, published in the journal Scientific Reports, was the first in 28,000 years in which humans laid eyes on a saber-toothed cat - at least since their extinction at the end of the ice age.

Along with his colleagues, Alexey Lopatin, a paleontologist in Russian and an author on the paper, confirmed that the 37,000-year-old mummy was a Homotherium, which would have grown up to be a rangy, lion-size cat with long forelimbs and heavy shoulders.

The species was the last of saber-toothed cats, which occupied a branch on the tree of life distinct from modern felines. [ Asher Elbein ]