New Fossil Sheds Light on Evolutionary Origins of Lions, Tigers and Bears

New fossils have shed light on the origins of some of the most well-known modern mammals: lions, tigers and bears among others. Scientists have uncovered new specimens of one of the earliest of these carnivoraformes, which trace their ancestry back 55 million years.

Carnivoraforms include carnivorous mammals, such as cats, dogs, bears, seals and weasels. The new specimens include over 250 teeth and ankle bones. While this species was discovered before at the Belgian locality of Dormaal, these new findings allow for a better characterization of the animal and lend further insight into the origins of carnivoraforms.

The species is named Dormaalocyon latouri. It once possessed very primitive teeth, which suggest that the species was very close to the origin of carnivoraforms. Its ankle bones suggest that it was arboreal, living and moving through trees. It most likely lived in an environment that was warm, humid and wooded right after the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). This period was characterized by extremely warm temperatures and affected the evolution of many mammal groups, including carnivoraforms.

While these new findings reveal that this species was close to the origin of carnivoraforms, there may have been even more primitive species in the group in an earlier time period.

"The understanding of the origination of the carnivoraforms is important for reconstructing the adaptation of placental mammals to carnivorous diet," said Floreal Sole, one of the researchers, in a news release. "Therefore, Dormaalocyon provides information concerning the evolution of placental mmals after the disappearance of the largest dinosaurs (at the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event). Our study shows that the carnivoraforms were very diversified at the earliest Eocene, which allows hypothesizing that they were probably already diversified during the latest Paleocene."

So what does this mean? While this new fossil is likely not the "origin" of carnivoraforms, it is a very early representation of the group. In addition, it lends evidence to the idea that there are far more fossils out there to be found that can answer the question of the origin of this modern group. Currently, researchers are still hunting for these remains in order to learn a bit more about the evolutionary origins of these mammals.

The findings are published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.