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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Renfield. |
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Posted on 01/07/2012 7:07:30 PM PST by SunkenCiv
Sabertooth cats and other super-toothy predators apparently possessed mighty arms that they used to help them kill.
The beefy arms would have served to pin down prey and protect the ferocious-looking teeth of the feline predators, which were actually fragile enough to fracture, scientists find.
The finding also may hold for other knife-fanged prehistoric carnivores; long before sabertooth cats evolved, a number of now-extinct toothy hunters once roamed the Earth. These included the nimravids, or false sabertooth cats, which lived from 7 million to 42 million years ago alongside a sister group to cats known as barbourofelids, which lived from 5 million to 20 million years ago...
Nimravids and barbourofelids left no living descendants, but fossils revealed their fangs came in a wide range of shapes and sizes. Some were shorter and round, while others were longer and flattened. Some even were serrated like a steak knife, Meachen-Samuels said.
Sabertooth cats had long fangs that looked formidable but were fragile compared with those of modern felines. The daggerlike teeth were more vulnerable to fracture.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
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| GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach | |
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Thanks Renfield. |
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But I've got 2 felines that DID survive until recent time. And they look at me with a lean and hungry look, sometimes....
Give me a 30-30 and a smilodon anytime. Is safer.
/johnny
You are reading my mind.
But you screw up the crown if you get any flooding. And that's more expensive to fix than if you screw up the wood.
/johnny
It's exciting, at 0230. Way too exciting.
As I said.. give me a smileodon and a 30-30. I'll figure it out, or he will. Shoot up amongst us, one of HAS to have some relief.
/johnny
Recent studies at the University of Upsdownia suggests that the nimrodivedia and the buickflavanoid le sabre toothed cat had no living members since they went extinct before dying.
Fossils of modern felines show that having powerful jaws is no protection when found behind exotic eating sites located in the Powerful Arms Deli.
So are these "arms" in addition to their four legs. Or maybe they ran around on their hind legs so their front legs became "arms". Or maybe some journalist is just criminally abusing the English language again.
Question. If these fangs were supposedly so fragile, then why did they “evolve” that way? No survival of the fittest? Why grow them if it’s no good? Just doesn’t make sense to me.
Soooo I can’t sleep, find an interesting thread, and promptly spit out my Scotch I’m sipping after your post. You owe me a monitor!
That’s just damn funny. As long as it’s not my cat setting off both barrels of a shotgun.
It's not bad enough he set off one barrel, doing the lazy cat scratch thing.. When it went off and his left foot hit the other trigger as he was climbing the wall... That was ugly.
We don't do that anymore. It's contra-indicated, and barrels should point toward the ground.
/johnny
Blame me for the wipe out.
And if they ain't here, they ain't fittest.
'Flexes thumb across paw hand." Opposable thumbs beat smilodon even before rifles.
/johnny
Harumph. Ancient Sci-Fi writers wrote about hexapedal felines, Really old guys.
And the hex catz had PSI powers. LOL!
/johnny
Costs of carnivory: tooth fracture in Pleistocene and Recent carnivorans
BLAIRE VAN VALKENBURGH Large, carnivorous mammals often break their teeth, probably as a result of tooth to bone contact that occurs when carcasses are consumed more fully, a behaviour likely to occur under conditions of food stress. Recent studies of Pleistocene predators revealed high numbers of teeth broken in life, suggesting that carcass utilization and, consequently, food competition was more intense in the past than at present. However, the putative association between diet and tooth fracture frequency was based on a small sample of large, highly carnivorous species. In the present study, a greater diversity of extant carnivorans is sampled, including insectivorous, omnivorous, and carnivorous forms, ranging in size from weasels to tigers. Species that habitually consume hard foods (bones, shells) had the highest fracture frequencies, followed by carnivores, and then insectivorous and/or omnivorous species. Predator and prey sizes were not associated with tooth fracture frequency, but more aggressive species did break their teeth more often. Comparison of the modern sample with five Pleistocene species confirms the previous finding of higher tooth breakage in the past, although some extant species have fracture frequencies that approach those of extinct species. Thus, the Pleistocene predator guild appears to have been characterized by relatively high levels of competition that are rarely observed today. © 2009 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2009, 96, pg68–81.
__________________________ Evolution of Skull and Mandible Shape in Cats (Carnivora: Felidae)
Sabrecat evolution was strongly directed towards precision killing with very large upper canines, which implies efficient biting at greatly increased gape angles. In many prehistoric ecosystems, predator competition appears to have been more intense than today [42], [45], [46], so rapid killing of prey would have been important, and this could have acted as a selective driving force favouring rapid killing of prey [47], [48]. This could have been the underlying reason for the extreme specializations of derived sabrecats, but eventually proved an ecological cul de sac.
Such extreme specialisations indicate predation on large prey exclusively, and make a wider dietary regime, as found in modern large cats [3], [31] unlikely. This is in accord with all available evidence of prey preference among sabrecats, which unanimously indicates predation on large prey [49]–[52]. Additionally, by following this evolutionary route, the sabrecats were apparently unable to exploit the wide size regime of the feline cats, which specialised in powerful precision biting instead, and this technique appears effective against large and small prey alike. To date, no derived sabretoothed cat the size of a lynx, let alone a margay or a sand cat, have been discovered. The sabrecats appear to have been a prime example of strong selective forces for an unusual feeding ecology, resulting in highly derived species, which probably monopolized the large-predator niches so long as the ecosystems and climate zones remained relatively stable. The tradeoffs were powerful bite forces, a narrow dietary and body size regime, collectively probably implying greater risk of extinction if the environmental conditions to which these cats had become specialised changed too much or too rapidly. http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0002807
![](http://i1238.photobucket.com/albums/ff499/redmder/FR/FRdefending-1.png?t=1326003882")
We’ll chalk that up to lessons learned the hard way. Guess you got to do some work with spackle and possibly a bit of roofing. If you are into youtube do a search for the guy who shot his hat off. He has a misfire, looks down the barrel, luckily moves his cranium about 4 inches to look at something on the side of the shotgun and promptly blows a 2” hole in his ball cap visor. Almost a full on “Darwin”.
Safe journies Johnny, and I look forward to seeing more posts from you. And I thought I had crazy stories, you’ve got me beat!
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