New lion, size of house cat, with bone-crushing teeth, is found in fossil form

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An artist’s rendition of the newly found marsupial lion, Lekaneleo roskellyae, searching in northwestern Queensland.


Peter Schouten

A marsupial lion the scale of a home cat, with tooth sharp sufficient to interrupt bones, has been confirmed as a brand new genus. 

Paleontologists from the College of New South Wales found the stays of the tiny lion at Australia’s Riversleigh World Heritage Area in Queensland, the place scientists have been discovering fossils for many years.

The brand new marsupial lion was beforehand believed to be a part of the Priscileo roskellyae (Thylacoleonidae) genus due to its tooth and small dimension. However when researchers took a better take a look at the cranium and decrease jaw, they seen the cranium anatomy was totally different from that of different marsupial lions. 

“As we discovered extra and higher specimens at Riversleigh, we started to understand it did not belong to that group in any respect,” College of New South Wales’ Organic, Earth and Environmental Science Professor Michael Archer told CNN on Friday. “It was a brand new type of marsupial that hadn’t been seen earlier than. It was a special department on the marsupial lion household tree.” 

In a paper revealed this month within the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, researchers confirmed that the mammal was a brand new genus of the marsupial lion. 

Researchers suppose the marsupial lion, named Lekaneleo roskellyae, lived in bushes and ate birds, snakes and different small animals with its bolt-cutting teeth

Marsupial lions died out 35,000 years in the past, so researchers look to fossilized stays to assist decide how they died and if local weather change had any influence.

“We see many of those very unusual teams that do not have any dwelling representatives, slowly disappearing,” Archer advised CNN. “Understanding this complete relationship between environmental change and biodiversity is essential in understanding and anticipating what is going on to occur now.”

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