Reconstruction of the giant Inostrancevia africana, the latest surviving gorgonopsian in South Africa, eating its kill, a Lystrosaurus herbivore, by far outweighing the smaller gorgonopsian Cyonosaurus.Credit: Art by Matt Celeskey.
Remains of a species of a large, sabre-toothed predatory protomammal, which disappeared 251.9 million years ago, have been found in the rocks of the Karoo, in South Africa. The find sheds light on life at the top of the food chain millions of years ago.
Decades of research in the Karoo Basin, have shown how devastating the Permian-Triassic mass extinction was. Prior to the new study, it was thought that a group of predatory sabretooth protomammals, known as the gorgonopsians, disappeared well before the main extinction event.
Jennifer Botha, professor at the Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, is co-author of the study, published in Current Biology. She says “this new species of gorgonopsian, Inostrancevia africana, is the most recent to be identified. Our study shows extreme instability in the top predator niches around the extinction, with four major shifts within a span of roughly two million years, beginning before the main extinction event began.”
One of the skulls of Inostrancevia africana shows the huge sabre tooth. Credit: Jennifer Botha, University of the Witwatersrand
“Our research suggests that the terrestrial end-Permian extinction was more protracted than previously thought, lasting some one million years. There may have been several extinction pulses during this time, with increasingly difficult conditions. The gorgonopsians appear to be victims of the first extinction pulse.
“What is surprising is that our species is remarkably similar to another gorgonopsian species from Russia. We think that animals may have migrated between northern and southern parts of Pangaea, but this is the first definitive evidence of a Russian species in South Africa. We think that local extinctions of carnivores in Gondwana (South) allowed for the establishment of Laurasian (North) species,” she added.
