Extinct species stay out of plan

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And for some reason, as a research team reported in the journal Communications Biology. The roots of the rather long saber teeth on his upper jaw protruded so far into his skull that there was no room for forward-facing eye sockets.

The hunter doesn’t make classification easy for another reason: It was about the size of a jaguar and resembled a saber-toothed tiger with its enormous teeth. But it wasn’t a cat, it was a marsupial. Thylacosmilus atrox lived in South America until about three million years ago. According to the researchers, at least 70 percent of its diet consisted of meat. Like the saber-toothed cats of North America, it probably went on the hunt – but with much less 3D vision.

There’s a reason hunters and prey have different eyesight: Herbivores need good all-round vision to spot sneaking enemies. Predators’ forward-facing eyes allow both fields of view to overlap, thus allowing good three-dimensional vision and precise focus on potential prey.

But how did the deer-eyed saber-tooth get food? Scientists led by Charlène Gaillard of the Argentine research institute Inaglia in Mendoza used CT scans and 3D reconstructions to understand the visual system of the marsupial saber-tooth. Because of this, he was probably able to extend his eye sockets outward and align them so that the fields of view of both eyes overlapped significantly more.

It is not yet clear whether the advantages in obtaining food are decisive or whether Thylacosmilus atrox affects potential partners with its teeth. “We can view this as an anomaly because it doesn’t fit our preconceived categories of what a suitable carnivorous mammal should look like, but evolution makes its own rules,” said Inaglia researcher Analia Forasiepi.

(SDA)

Source : Blick