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| Panthera blytheae | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 13 2013, 11:18 AM (3,951 Views) | |
| Scalesofanubis | Nov 13 2013, 11:18 AM Post #1 |
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Omnivore
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Panthera blytheae![]() Temporal range: Messinian-Zanclean Scientific classification Kingdom:Animalia Phylum:Chordata Class:Mammalia Order:Carnivora Family:Felidae Genus:Panthera Species:†Panthera blytheae ![]() Description Panthera blytheae was small for a big cat, around fifty pounds. It probably looked like a cross between the modern clouded leopard and Snow Leopard in overall build. Habitat and ecology This cat lived in the ancient Tibetan Plateau, which at the time was more rugged than it is today, but probably not much warmer. Also in this environment were wooly rhinoceros, antelopes, and three-toed horses. Judging by the angle of the bones, it seems the deposits p. blythae was found in were an ancient river bed that tended to sweep animals down stream, as well as a large lake that changed sizes seasonally. The herd animals seem to have lived in the plains, while the cats hunted the hills. One interesting possibility is that these cold river valleys high in the mountains acted as a reservoir for cold weather speices to spread out from once the ice ages began. Affinities and Implications Panthera blytheae is the oldest known panthera cat, but it seems it is not the first, their are probably older cats in the genus yet to be discovered. Genetic evidence points to the ancestry of panthera being in Asia, but this is fairly solid proof for that hypothesis, with p. blythae being older than any previous finds, which were in Africa. It's closest modern relative is probably the snow leopard. http://www.popsci.com/article/science/hello-kitty-oldest-big-cat-fossil-found http://lacmvp.blogspot.com/2013/11/panthera-blytheae-new-cat-on-roof.html http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/11/131112-big-cats-origin-tibet-animals-science/ Edited by Scalesofanubis, Nov 23 2013, 04:50 AM.
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| Taipan | Nov 16 2013, 03:06 PM Post #2 |
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Systematic palaeontology The new fossil pantherine is described as follows: Carnivora Bowdich, 1821; Felidae Fischer, 1817; Pantherinae Pocock, 1917; Panthera Oken, 1816. Panthera blytheae sp. nov. Holotype. A partial cranium preserving the first left incisor, canines, and the third and fourth premolars, representing a full adult individual, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Beijing, China, specimen number V18788.1 (figure 1; electronic supplementary material, S3 and table S1); discovered by J.L. on 7 August 2010 and excavated by a field team under the direction of G.T.T. Referred material. IVPP V18788.2, ramus fragment (IVPP locality ZD1001). IVPP V18788.3, partial premaxilla–maxilla fragment with left canine (IVPP locality ZD1001). IVPP V18789.1–3, isolated fourth premolar, partial maxillary and dentary fragments (IVPP locality ZD1208). IVPP V18790, partial right dentary with third and fourth premolars and the first molar (IVPP locality ZD1223) (see electronic supplementary material, figures S3 and S4). Etymology. The specific name, blytheae, is made in honour of the daughter of avid supporters of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Paul and Heather Haaga. Type locality and horizon. IVPP locality ZD1001 (31°39'58″ N, 79°44'57″ E, elevation 4114 m) is adjacent to the Zanda Canyon trail approximately 15 km north of the Zanda county seat, Ngari District, Tibet Autonomous Region, China. IVPP V18788.1–3 were collected from a small bone bed in the middle part of the Zanda Formation, within a lens of greenish, coarse-grained sandstone (see the electronic supplementary material for details). Age. The type locality IVPP ZD1001 is stratigraphically correlated to chron C3n.1r with an estimated age of 4.42 Ma . The stratigraphic range of occurrence of the species based on all available material is from 5.95 Ma (IVPP locality ZD1223, correlated to chron C3r) to 4.10 Ma (IVPP locality ZD1208, correlated to chron C2Ar), or from the end of the Late Miocene to the Early Pliocene (figure 3). ![]() Figure 1. Holotype cranium of P. blytheae, IVPP V18788.1. (a) Three-dimensional reconstruction of cranium, dorsal view. (b) Cranium dorsal view. (c) Three-dimensional reconstruction of cranium, left lateral view. (d) Cranium left lateral view. (e) Three-dimensional reconstruction of cranium, ventral view. (f) Cranium ventral view. f.s., frontal sinus; mx., maxilla; pmx., premaxilla; n., nasal; i.f., infraorbital foramen; j., jugal; sq., squamosal; C, upper canine; P3, upper third premolar; P4, upper fourth premolar (carnassial), P2.a, alveolus of upper second premolar. (Online version in colour.) 3. Diagnosis Panthera blytheae possesses characteristics shared with other species of the genus, including frontoparietal suture located at the postorbital constriction, the absence of an anterior bulge overhanging the infraorbital canal, truncated and tapered dorsal maxilla, tip of parasagittal crest perpendicular to the sagittal crest, and an angular connection between the maxillary flange and the palatal bone at the posterior edge of the palate . Panthera blytheae shares with the snow leopard Panthera uncia in having an almost round canine cross section, a weakly inclined mandibular symphysis, a smooth transition between mandibular ramus and symphysis, the presence of fronto-nasal depression, narrow distance between anterior edge of bulla and glenoid ridge, a sharp-turning ventral premaxilla–maxilla border at the canines, and straight and symmetrical p4 cusp alignment . Panthera blytheae is unique in possessing a small labial cusp on the posterior cingulum of the upper third premolars, and the presence of converging ridges on the labial surface of the upper fourth premolars (see electronic supplementary material for additional discussion). 4. Description and comparison The holotype specimen is diagenetically compressed in the dorsoventral direction; therefore, the morphology of each bone in the face was reconstructed using high-resolution X-ray computer tomography (figure 1 and electronic supplementary material). The cranium of P. blytheae is around the size of a clouded leopard (Neofelis nebulosa), about 10% smaller than the living snow leopard (figure 2). The digital reconstruction shows a well-developed frontal sinus area in the posterior postorbital region, a shared feature of the living pantherines. The incisors and canines are heavily worn, and in comparison the premolars are sharp and unworn. The presence of highly reduced second upper premolars and relatively large first upper molars is evident from their alveoli, and their relative sizes are more similar to the condition in the clouded leopard than to other pantherines. Lower premolars are similar in size to those in small felines such as the ocelot, but the lower first molar is relatively enlarged. The width of the muzzle relative to the rest of the cranium is intermediate between the narrow morphology seen in the clouded leopard, and the widened appearance present in all other pantherines. Mandible depth, P3 parastyle and lingual expansion, and frontal sinus expansion in P. blytheae are more similar to the large extant pantherines than to the snow leopard. Undulating Hunter–Schreger Band enamel microstructure is present throughout the cheek teeth of P. blytheae. ![]() Figure 2. Time-calibrated phylogeny of the Pantherinae based on a partial scaffold of the combined dataset, using an IGR relaxed-clock Bayesian analysis. 95% HPD intervals are shown in shaded bars; ranges older than 20.0 Ma are trimmed for sake of illustration (see table 1 for full range of data). Reconstructed ancestral geographical ranges using DEC model M3 (Central Asian pantherine ancestor; see electronic supplementary material, table S8) are shown as pie graphs over ancestral nodes, indicating probabilities of single versus more inclusive regions of ancestral distribution. Modern and historical geographical ranges and fossil localities are indicated for terminal nodes as in figure 4. Stratigraphic ranges of fossil species used in the analyses are indicated by thick black bars. White boxes indicate genetic and morphological character transitions: I. SRY3(+4), II. Numt insert 2, III. SRY3(–7), based on [1]; other numbers refer to morphological characters, see data matrix in MorphoBank. Panthera atrox, ‘American lion’; P. spelaea, ‘cave lion’; Panthera leo, lion; Panthera pardus, leopard; Panthera onca, jaguar; Panthera uncia, snow leopard; Neofelis nebulosa, clouded leopard; Leopardus pardalis, ocelot; Puma concolor, cougar. †extinct species. ) Fossil of New Big Cat Species Discovered: Oldest Ever Found Nov. 13, 2013 — The oldest big cat fossil ever found -- which fills in a significant gap in the fossil record -- was discovered on a paleontological dig in Tibet, scientists announced today. A skull from the new species, named Panthera blytheae, was excavated and described by a team led by Jack Tseng -- a PhD student at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the time of the discovery, and now a postdoctoral fellow at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York. "This find suggests that big cats have a deeper evolutionary origin than previously suspected," Tseng said. The announcement was made in a scientific paper published by the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, on Nov. 13. Tseng's coauthors include Xiaoming Wang, who has joint appointments at USC, the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM) and the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits, the AMNH, and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS); Graham Slater of the Smithsonian Institution; Gary Takeuchi of the NHM and the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits; Qiang Li of the CAS; Juan Liu of the University of Alberta and the CAS; and Guangpu Xie of the Gansu Provincial Museum. DNA evidence suggests that the so-called "big cats" -- the Pantherinae subfamily, including lions, jaguars, tigers, leopards, snow leopards, and clouded leopards -- diverged from their nearest evolutionary cousins, Felinae (which includes cougars, lynxes, and domestic cats), about 6.37 million years ago. However, the oldest fossils of big cats previously found are tooth fragments uncovered at Laetoli in Tanzania (the famed hominin site excavated by Mary Leakey in the 1970s), dating to just 3.6 million years ago. Using magnetostratigraphy -- dating fossils based on the distinctive patterns of reversals in Earth's magnetic field, which are recorded in layers of rock -- Tseng and his team were able to estimate the age of the skull at between 4.10 and 5.95 million years old. ![]() The holotype skull of Panthera blytheae, IVPP V18788.1. The new cat takes its name from Blythe, the snow-leopard-loving daughter of Paul and Heather Haaga, who are avid supporters of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The find not only challenges previous suppositions about the evolution of big cats, it also helps place that evolution in a geographical context. The find occurs in a region that overlaps the majority of current big cat habitats, and suggests that the group evolved in central Asia and spread outward. In addition, recent estimates suggested that the genus Panthera (lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, and snow leopards) did not split from genus Neofelis (clouded leopards) until 3.72 million years ago -- which the new find disproves. Tseng, his wife Juan Liu, and Takeuchi discovered the skull in 2010 while scouting in the remote border region between Pakistan and China -- an area that takes a bumpy seven-day car ride to reach from Beijing. Liu found over one hundred bones that were likely deposited by a river eroding out of a cliff. There, below the antelope limbs and jaws, was the crushed -- but largely complete -- remains of the skull. "It was just lodged in the middle of all that mess," Tseng said. For the past three years, Tseng and his team have used both anatomical and DNA data to determine that the skull does, in fact, represent a new species. They plan to return to the site where they found the skull in the summer to search for more specimens. "We are in the business of discovery," said Wang, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the NHM; adjunct professor of geoscience and biology at USC; and research associate at AMNH. "We go out into the world in search of new fossils to illuminate the past." ![]() At left is: Life reconstruction of Panthera blytheae based on skull CT data; illustrated by Mauricio Antón. At Right are images of the holotype specimen and reconstructed facial bones based on CT data; Figure 1 from the paper. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/11/131113182604.htm Journal Reference: Himalayan fossils of the oldest known pantherine establish ancient origin of big cats Z. Jack Tseng1,2,3,†⇑, Xiaoming Wang1,2,3,4⇑, Graham J. Slater5, Gary T. Takeuchi2,6, Qiang Li4, Juan Liu4,7 and Guangpu Xie8 Proc. R. Soc. B 7 January 2014 vol. 281 no. 1774 20132686 Abstract Pantherine felids (‘big cats’) include the largest living cats, apex predators in their respective ecosystems. They are also the earliest diverging living cat lineage, and thus are important for understanding the evolution of all subsequent felid groups. Although the oldest pantherine fossils occur in Africa, molecular phylogenies point to Asia as their region of origin. This paradox cannot be reconciled using current knowledge, mainly because early big cat fossils are exceedingly rare and fragmentary. Here, we report the discovery of a fossil pantherine from the Tibetan Himalaya, with an age of Late Miocene–Early Pliocene, replacing African records as the oldest pantherine. A ‘total evidence’ phylogenetic analysis of pantherines indicates that the new cat is closely related to the snow leopard and exhibits intermediate characteristics on the evolutionary line to the largest cats. Historical biogeographic models provide robust support for the Asian origin of pantherines. The combined analyses indicate that 75% of the divergence events in the pantherine lineage extended back to the Miocene, up to 7 Myr earlier than previously estimated. The deeper evolutionary origin of big cats revealed by the new fossils and analyses indicate a close association between Tibetan Plateau uplift and diversification of the earliest living cats. http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/281/1774/20132686.full |
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