Ketchikan: Ketchikan Community Risk Level Raised to HIGH; Ketchikan High School Closed Through Friday, May 7th - The Ketchikan Emergency Operations Center and Ketchikan School District have seen an increase in COVID-19 cases in the past couple of weeks, including an increase in community spread cases. There are 12 new cases reported in Ketchikan today, and 9 cases reported on Monday. Seven of those cases were determined to be close contacts to a known positive case, three were attributed to community spread, three were determined to be related to recent travel, and eight of the cases remain under investigation. In the past 10 days, there have been more than 10 positive cases attributed to staff or students of the Ketchikan High School.
According to a research paper published last week in the Journal of Mammalian Evolution, this new-found specimen provides clear evidence for a diverse range of predator fauna existing during the late Miocene of the continent that included some of the biggest felids in Earth s history.
Credit: Roger Witter
The sabre-toothed cat was part of an early evolutionary branch that went extinct roughly 10,000 years ago, where today s house cats are an entirely different evolutionary offshoot that emerged later. Sabre-toothed cats, similar to lions, were quite social animals that hunted for their meals and existed amongst other members of the same species.
Newly Discovered Giant Saber-Toothed Cat Was So Big It Hunted Rhinos
by : Daniel Richardson on : 10 May 2021 13:47
James St. John/Flickr CC BY 2.0/Pixabay
Researchers have found evidence of a giant saber-toothed cat in the US that would hunt rhinos.
Big cats are majestic beasts but there used to be even bigger variations of the animals. Researchers found that a saber-toothed cat weighing up to 900 pounds, between 5–9 million years ago, roamed the United States.
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The research published in the
Journal of Mammalian Evolution suggests that the saber-toothed cat would have hunted other large animals that weighed 1,000–2,000lbs. It is believed the cat was one of the largest in the world’s history and has also led to further questions about the spread of the species across the world.
A few million years ago, this giant saber-toothed cat hunted rhinos in North America
Not your average cat. A A
Some 5-9 million years ago, a bad boy called
Machairodus lahayishupup roamed the open spaces in North America (pronounced Mah-CHI-rho-duss Lah-HIGH-ees-hoop-oop). It was the largest cat of its time (that we know of, at least), weighing up to 900 pounds (410 kg) and hunting pretty much everything that moved, including prey ten times larger than itself.
Image credits: Ian Abbott
Animals in the
Machairodus genus are thought to be largely similar to today’s lions or tigers, with a couple of major distinctions; one, when it comes to their teeth. The saber-toothed cats, as their name implies, had long canines protruding from the mouth. The canines are thin and flattened, like the blade of a knife or (you’ve guessed it) a saber.
A newly identified saber-toothed cat terrorized parts of North America between 5 and 9 million years ago. In addition to being a new species, it is also one of the largest cats ever discovered.
Based on the analysis of several bones, researchers were able to determine that this new species – which has been named
Machairodus lahayishupup – would have weighed an average of 600 pounds (272 kilograms) and would have been able to kill prey weighing as much as 6,000 pounds. They were believed to have feasted on giant camels, giant ground sloths, and rhinoceroses, just to name a few. It certainly would have been a force to be reckoned with, especially with its large forearms that allowed it to subdue its prey.