Before dinosaurs and the first mammals appeared on Earth, distant mammal relatives with long serrated canine teeth roamed the land as the dominant carnivores. The earliest animals of this extinct group of saber-toothed animals, called gorgonopsians, have long been absent from the fossil record, limiting scientists’ understanding of them. However, a recent discovery in Spain is now filling that gap.
What scientists know about these mammal-adjacent creatures comes from fossils less than 270 million years old. Most remarkably, the recent find is likely 280 million to 270 million years old, predating its closest known relatives by tens of millions of years. The study’s lead author, Josep Fortuny, believes it is “most likely the oldest gorgonopsian on the planet.”
From the newly discovered fossil, scientists could determine that the specimen was as tall as a medium-sized dog and weighed roughly 30 to 40 kg. It would have had four legs, a long tail, and a blunt snout. As with others of its lineage, the specimen would not have had fur or visible ears, and, like crocodiles, it would have replaced its teeth repeatedly throughout its lifetime.
Paleontologists discovered the bones of this gorgonopsian during the 2019 and 2021 expeditions to Mallorca, a Mediterranean island that is part of Spain. In addition to the fossil’s age, the discovery was intriguing for its unexpected location. Until this point, gorgonopsid fossils only appeared in arid, high-latitude areas in South Africa and Russia. But Mallorca would have been in the center of the supercontinent Pangea and experienced wet and dry seasons during the Permian Period. It implies that there may be more fossils like this in other areas, such as the tropics.