Archeologists Unearth Oldest Saber-Toothed Animal in the World, Filling Longstanding Blank Space in Group's History

Long before dinosaurs and mammals, the earth was dominated by gorgonopsians. These beings are distant relatives of mammals and sported long, sawlike teeth, stated CNN. Their teeth arrangement made them the oldest known specimen of saber-toothed animal roaming on land. Experts have not found many fossils of this group. Some years ago researchers unearthed remains of this extinct carnivore from Spain which revealed that these creatures are 280 million to 270 million years old. Findings regarding this breakthrough discovery were published in the journal Nature Communications.

The new-found fossil places the gorgonopsian as one of the earliest ancestors originating from the therapsid family tree. This family tree barring these carnivorous beings also includes the forefathers of several modern mammals and other nonmammalian groups that are now extinct. Researchers are hopeful that with this finding they can figure out how mammals emerged and then evolved on the planet. Paleontologists collected the remains of the carnivore in Mallorca, a Mediterranean island while venturing into the area for exploration from 2019 to 2021. The age of the fossil astounded the research team. The specimen was the oldest known specimen of gorgonopsians and the earliest fossil found of the therapsid family tree. 

The remains contain the gorgonopsian's canines, a portion of its jaw, vertebrae, ribs, tailbones, toe bones, and part of its hind limb. The creature's skull was incomplete, but as per the discovered remains, it was around seven inches (18 centimeters) long. Researchers have also calculated the creature's weight based on the bone structure in their custody and believe it was from 66 to 88 pounds (30 to 40 kilograms).

On the topic of appearance, researchers claimed that the animal shared similarities with dogs and lizards. As per their examinations, experts believe this branch of animals unlike present-day mammals had several cycles of teeth regeneration. "Mammals today, for the most part, just have one replacement cycle of teeth," study coauthor, Ken Angielczyk, MacArthur Curator of Paleomammalogy at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History said. "Whereas gorgonopsians and other therapsids generally were more like a crocodile today, where they have teeth that are erupting continuously."

Fossil records of the therapsid family tree are not consistent by nature. "There is a big time gap in the fossil record of therapsids, between when they are predicted to have evolved based on our knowledge of relationships of synapsids (a larger vertebrate group that includes therapsids) and when they actually show up in the fossil record," study coauthor, Josep Fortuny, leader of the computational biomechanics and evolution of life history research group at the Miquel Crusafont Catalan Institute of Paleontology explained. Experts have previously calculated that therapsid fossils would begin showing up on rocks around 300 million years ago. But they never found any proof of this before the discovery in Spain.

According to examinations, the new specimen at least dates back to 270 million years, and could be even older. Before finding these remains researchers had only unearthed therapsida mammals from the middle Permian. Therefore, this fossil's age is so crucial for experts. "Everything from the early Permian on the mammal line is outside of this group Therapsida, and all our knowledge of therapsids comes from the middle Permian and later," said Roger Benson, Macaulay Curator of Dinosaur Paleobiology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, who was not involved in the research explained. "But paleontologists have long suspected there were therapsids before the middle Permian — we just didn’t find their fossils yet. This fossil is the most promising candidate for an early Permian therapsid so far."

The fossil's discovery site also intrigued researchers as it allowed them to explore mammal evolution in the context of the tropical environment. Before this finding, gorgonopsian had been detected only in high-latitude places. Mallorca was likely a part of the supercontinent Pangea when this creature walked on Earth, which was in the equatorial zone. "One of the things people have wondered is if maybe important events in mammal ancestry took place in the tropics, and we’ve been missing fossils of these types of animals at the right age to know about that," Benson said. "That’s one of the intriguing implications of this fossil, is the potential that important events in mammal ancestry occurred at lower latitudes in environments that we haven’t sampled so much in the fossil record."