Bite marks, in the form of traces left on bones by the teeth of scavengers or predators, are not uncommon in the fossil record. These marks are sometimes impressively large. What they show is that carnivores of the past, like their modern equivalents, used to eat flesh.
So far, so good.
But every now and then a new find throws open new possibilities. In our paper we unpack a rare find – the first healed bite mark and embedded tooth in the snout of a middle Permian gorgonopsian. The gorgonopsians were a group of fierce sabre-toothed predators that roamed Africa between 265 million and 250 million years ago. These non-mammalian therapsids were part of the ancestral stock that eventually evolved mammalness and gave rise to modern mammals.
The fossil we described in our research was recently rediscovered in the collection of Cape Town’s Iziko Museum of Natural History. The small partial snout was originally found in the 1940s by the famous South African palaeontologist Lieuwe D. Boonstra.
Fossil offers fresh insights into social habits of our non-mammalian ancestors
So far, so good.
But every now and then a new find throws open new possibilities. In our paper we unpack a rare find – the first healed bite mark and embedded tooth in the snout of a middle Permian gorgonopsian. The gorgonopsians were a group of fierce sabre-toothed predators that roamed Africa between 265 million and 250 million years ago. These non-mammalian therapsids were part of the ancestral stock that eventually evolved mammalness and gave rise to modern mammals.
The fossil we described in our research was recently rediscovered in the collection of Cape Town’s Iziko Museum of Natural History. The small partial snout was originally found in the 1940s by the famous South African palaeontologist Lieuwe D. Boonstra.
Fossil offers fresh insights into social habits of our non-mammalian ancestors