Thylacosmilus

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Thylacosmilus
Thylacosmilus, left in the background Glyptodon

Thylacosmilus , left in the background Glyptodon

Temporal occurrence
Miocene to Pliocene
7 to 2.6 million years
Locations
Systematics
Synapsids (Synapsida)
Mammals (mammalia)
Metatheria
Sparassodonta
Thylacosmilidae
Thylacosmilus
Scientific name
Thylacosmilus
Riggs , 1933
reconstruction
reconstruction

Thylacosmilus is an extinct marsupial from the order Sparassodonta . He lived in the Pliocene in South America and is the best known member of the Thylocosmilidae family. The extinct family of Thylacosmilidae was common in South America from the Miocene to the Pliocene. Their skulls were very similar to those of the placental saber-toothed cats , but as marsupials they were only very distantly related to them.

Thylacosmilus was around 1.2 meters long and with a reconstructed weight of 106 kg, about the size of a modern jaguar .

Like the saber-toothed cats, it had a pair of long canine teeth in its upper jaw that protruded far beyond the line of the mouth. Characteristic were the large tooth sheaths in the lower jaw, which we also find in Nimravids and saber-tooth cats and which obviously had the task of protecting the teeth when their mouths were closed. In contrast to the saber-toothed cats, the Thylacosmilus lacked the incisors and the retractable claws. Thylacosmilus' prey probably included large, slow mammals.

Individual evidence

  1. Stephen Wroe, Colin McHenr and Jeffrey Thomason: Bite club: comparative bite force in big biting mammals and the prediction of predatory behavior in fossil taxa. Proceeding of the Royal Society B, 2005, pp. 1-7, doi: 10.1098 / rspb.2004.2986 .

Web links

Commons : Thylacosmilus  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

literature

  • Douglas Palmer: Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Animals. An illustrated encyclopedia. Könemann, Cologne 2000, ISBN 3-8290-6113-7 .
  • Alan Turner: The big cats and their fossil relatives. Columbia University Press, New York NY 1997, ISBN 0-231-10229-1 .