And it has toe beans! And fur!
(I can’t believe this hasn’t been posted yet - and if it has, sorry, I really did search diligently)
Anyway, this is a very cool find. As far as I can tell it’s pretty much intact.
Link: Mummified baby saber-toothed tiger found with fur and toes intact - Earth.com
Should we/could we clone it?
I just can’t get over how much it resembles my own kitten.
I don’t think we should bring them back, assuming that’s even possible. They existed from the Eocene through the Pleistocene (56 million to 11,700 years ago), and have already had a pretty good run.
They’re so cute at that age, when their incisors are only pocket-knife size
Every species has had its time throughout evolutionary history. Let’s not reanimate creatures that nature deemed biologically obsolete long ago just to put it in a cage and gawk at it.
That this was found in Siberia is really big news. Smilodons and such were previously only known from the Americas.
Smilodons died out about 10,000 BP. Climate change and human activities are posed as reasons for all the die-offs at that time. Humans had been in Siberia a long time They say this kitten dates to 35,000 BP. That’s borderline with modern humans. Ice sheet advances and retreats would affect whether there were people around at the local extinction time. No doubt there will be a lot of hefty debate about whether humans might have affected the extinction of the Siberian smilodons.
Looks to be only a few months old. Possibly died 35,000 years ago but I doubt any of them lived that long.
Wow - I had no idea saber-tooth tigers were around that long ago.
Here is the requisite cite.
Very cute.
But, if a live creature: do not pet. That’s definitely a kitten – but it’s definitely not a domestic kitten.
If I’m reading it right, that’s the dates for the entire Eocene and most or all of the Pleistocene epochs. (I’m not sure when the Anthropocene is considered to have started.)
The article goes on to say
According to the [fossil record], the Nimravidae were [extant]from about 37 million to 7 million years ago. Only distantly related to felids, they include the genera Hoplophoneus, Nimravus, Dinictis, and Barbourofelis. The Machairodontinae, extant from about 12 million to less than 10,000 years ago, include the more familiar Smilodon as well as Homotherium and Meganteron.
So if sabertooth are Smilodon, then their run started 12 million years ago, not 56.
ETA: Whoops, apparently this kitten is Homotherium, not Smilodon. But apparently they evolved around the same time.
Nimvaride pictured below. Close enough for me – I’ll call that a saber-toothed tiger!
The article mentions that it’s a Homotherium latidens. From here it says “Homotherium is an extinct genus of scimitar-toothed cat belonging to the extinct subfamily Machairodontinae that inhabited North America, Eurasia, and Africa (as well as possibly South America) during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs from around 4 million to 12,000 years ago”. Not nearly as old as I thought, but I sure wouldn’t want to run into one in a dark alley.
Saber-tooth trivia: Smilodon californicus is California’s state fossil. Seeing the skeleton at the La Brea tar pits as a kid made quite an impression on me!
No one said anything about putting it in a cage. The universe unfolds, ‘nature’ isn’t a sentient entity that deems these things, as such. ‘Nature’ was was quite happy to provide a niche for dinosaurs for 165 million years until a random asteroid took them out. And, without that, might have gone another 165. Or was that nature’s will? Using that logic, if we bring one back, isn’t that also nature’s will?
But all that pedantry aside, I was front loading the OP with the obvious question that always comes up in these kind of threads in a playful way. The main purpose of the OP was to share this incredible find.
No, not yet, but an attraction like that would be a fabulous financial boon for any theme park. It’s been proven time and time again that, when you’re talking that kind of money, ethics take a back seat. Imagine the magnitude of the contract that a genetics company could get for producing that kind of attraction.
Is kitten shaped. Therefore, safe to pet.
And, despite that, it hasn’t happened yet for a myriad of reasons. Our hypothetical tiger is safe for now.
Right? That pic of it’s little toe beans really got to me.
Just yesterday I was at California Academy of Science, which also has a skeleton from the La Brea tar pits. Even scarier-looking as a skeleton, to me, you can see those fangs anchored in the upper skull. Re-animate that? No thanks.
Which now makes me wonder if they could have gotten any DNA from the bone marrow or something. Not that I think that’s a good idea, just idle speculation.
it was mentioned in mpsims. i really want one! it looks like a little plush toy. the article mentioned that the fur was soft.
i’ll bet the kitten fur was soft, the adult fur would not be, after interacting with the elements.
Personally, I’d try to create a few just for the sake of science. Best guess would be that they’re just variants on current large cats but, who knows, maybe they are producing some hormone that cures cancer or have some antibody that would protect modern animals from some plague.
It’s no more wrong to study the animals of the past than the ones of today.