Ground sloth predators1/7/2024 Hill suspects the cat’s primary prey was Jefferson’s giant ground sloth, which were common in Iowa during the Ice Age. Research opportunities with the sabertooth cat skull don’t end with the published analysis, the researchers say. “Iowa is a fantastic laboratory to do research on extinct Ice Age animals and the people who were just beginning to share the landscape with them.” Eclectic diet They hold clues about the ecology of the animals, and how they respond to dramatic climate change and the appearance of a new predator and competitor on the landscape, including people,” says Hill. “We can learn a lot from these types of fossils. Small patches of worn-down bone on top of the skull indicate it slid along a river-bottom before coming to rest and then buried for thousands of years. Hill and Easterla speculate the animal was seriously injured while attacking prey, which ultimately proved fatal within days of the trauma. How the sabertooth cat died is not clear. In comparison, the average adult male African lion weighs about 400 pounds. They estimate the Iowa cat weighed about 550 pounds at death and may have approached 650 pounds as an adult in prime physical condition. Since the Iowa skull is larger than many male skulls from the tar pits, the researchers argue it belonged to a male. Hill explains sabertooth were sexually dimorphic, meaning males were larger than females. To figure out its sex, they compared its skull measurements with adult male and female sabertooth skulls from the Rancho La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles. Gaps between the skull’s boney plates indicate its head was still growing, and the permanent teeth don’t show much wear from cutting and chewing. Hill and Easterla believe the skull belonged to a subadult (2-3 year old) male when it died. “The cat would have lived alongside other extinct animals like dire wolf, giant short-faced bear, long-nosed peccary, flat-headed peccary, stag-moose, muskox, and giant ground sloth, and maybe a few bison and mammoth.” Sabertooth fossil clues “We think southwest Iowa during this period was a parkland with patches of trees interspersed with grassy openings, somewhat similar to central Canada today,” says Hill. Hill says it may have been one of the last sabertooths to walk the planet as glaciers receded and temperatures rose. The researchers used radiocarbon dating to determine the cat died at the end of the Ice Age between 13,605 and 13,460 years ago. Their findings appear in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews. Hill analyzed the specimen in collaboration with David Easterla, professor emeritus of biology at Northwest Missouri State University. It’s exquisite.” (Credit: Christopher Gannon/Iowa State) This skull from the East Nishnabotna River is in near perfect condition. “Finds of this animal are widely scattered and usually represented by an isolated tooth or bone. “The skull is a really big deal,” says Hill. The remarkably well-preserved skull found in Page County is even rarer, and its discovery offers clues about the iconic Ice Age species before its extinction roughly 12-13,000 years ago. The chance of finding any fossilized remains from a sabertooth cat is slim, says Matthew Hill, an associate professor of archaeology at Iowa State and expert on animal bones. The recent discovery of a sabertooth cat skull in southwest Iowa is the first evidence the prehistoric predator once inhabited the state.
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