Watch this video about a new species of big cats that was discovered.
Video Transcript
The evolutionary history of our feline friends just became a bit clearer with the recent discovery of what are now known to be the oldest big cat fossils ever found.
Dating back to somewhere between four to six million years ago, they belong to a new species believed to be an ancestral precursor to the modern-day pantherines, which are large cat species including lions, tigers, jaguars, and leopards.
Of all the living members of this group, they are most closely related to the snow leopard. And considering they both share a similar habitat, we can speculate similar lifestyles and behaviors.
It was in a remote basin on the Tibetan Plateau that Jack Tseng and a team of paleontologists unearthed the bones of this ancient predator, finally providing fossil evidence to support the widely held belief that the big cats originated from Central Asia rather than Africa.
Because before this, the oldest fossils were tooth fragments from Tanzania. But despite the species' early beginnings, it likely isn't the very first, meaning even more primitive big cats have yet to be uncovered. So who's going to find them?
Once again, thanks for tuning in, and giddy up!