Everything was thanks to a skull. It is almost complete and appeared in the Egyptian desert. It reveals a new species of 30 million years of age of the old carnivorous hyaenodonta predator. The new carnivore found in Egypt you had special characteristics.
He had sharp and powerful mandibular muscles, suggesting a strong bite. The recently identified “Bastetodon” was a “fearsome” mammal of the size of a leopard. He would have been at the top of all carnivores when our own ancestors similar to monkeys still evolved.
The findings are published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. They detail how this fierce creature would probably have hunted primates, primitive hippos, primitive elephants. He lived in the leafy forest of Fayum, Egypt, now a desert.
Egyptian goddess
The researchers from the American University of Cairo gave details. «The team excavated meticulously layers of rock dating from about 30 million years ago. When we were about to conclude our work, a team member discovered something remarkable. A set of large teeth that stood out from the ground. His shout of emotion joined the team. It marked the beginning of an extraordinary discovery: an almost complete skull of an ancient apex carnivority (at the top of the food chain). A dream for any vertebrate paleontologist ».
The Bastetodon belongs to a kind of an extinct group of carnivorous mammals called hyienodontes. They evolved long before modern carnivores, such as cats, dogs and hyenas. They hunted in African ecosystems after the extinction of dinosaurs.
The new carnivore found in Egypt was baptized in honor of the former Egyptian goddess with a cat’s head, Bastet. It symbolized protection, pleasure and good health. The region where the specimen was found is famous for its fossils and artifacts of ancient Egypt.
Evolution of ecosystems
His skull was unearthed during an expedition to Fayum’s depression. Excavations reveal an important temporary window that covers about 15 million years of evolutionary history of mammals in Africa.
This period of time not only captures the transition from the global warming of Eocene to the global cooling of the oligocene. It also reveals how these climatic changes played a crucial role in the configuration of current ecosystems.
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