😲 Jurassic Park Prequel Alert: Before Dinosaurs, A Saber-Toothed Terror Ruled During Earth’s Worst Mass Extinction! 😱
TL;DR: 250 million years before T-Rex was even a thing, there was a legit monster, the Inostrancevia africana, running the show. This ferocious saber-toothed beast thrived while most other life forms were biting the dust thanks to our planet’s biggest-ever extinction event, the ‘Great Dying’. 🌋⏳🦷
🌍 Way, way back, like 250 million years ago, before Barney and his pals were just a twinkle in Mother Nature’s eye, Earth had a bad day. Okay, a really, really bad million years. In fact, it was like the worst hangover in the history of the planet. Massive volcanic eruptions caused a climate catastrophe, wiping out almost 96% of marine species and around 70% of land-dwelling reptiles, amphibians, insects, and plants. Sad face, right? 😭
But here’s the plot twist: while everything was pretty much falling apart, a new beastie was having the time of its life. Enter stage left, the Inostrancevia africana, a saber-toothed predator that not only survived, but actually flourished during this time of epic chaos. This fanged beastie was the very definition of ‘adapt or die’. 🦖💪
Fast forward to the present and scientists are now publishing studies about how this beastie, part of the Inostrancevia family, trotted across Pangea (big, ol’ supercontinent before it broke up into the continents we know today) for a whopping 7,000 miles to become the top dog in an ecosystem where most other predators were gone. Remember, these bad boys weren’t supposed to survive mass extinction events. So, are you thinking what I’m thinking? Could these findings possibly tell us something about how today’s carnivores might handle climate change? 🌍🤔
Before the ‘Great Dying’, synapsids, our mammalian predecessors, ruled the Earth. “Not nearly enough people know about this,” says Christian Kammerer, a research curator and paleontologist. And he’s right! How many of us knew that these guys, our distant relatives, were more closely related to us than any dinosaur or other reptile? 🤷♂️🧬
Our saber-toothed superstar, the Inostrancevia, belonged to a group of synapsids called gorgonopsians. Imagine a creature that’s kind of like a tiger, but with a reptilian twist and skin like a rhino. Cool, right? Or maybe terrifying…🐅🦎
The science folks used to think these critters were native to Russia because that’s where all the fossils were found. But now they’ve turned up in South Africa too, and it turns out that these South African fossils belong to an entirely new species: the Inostrancevia africana! Say hello to the globetrotter of the prehistoric world! 🌍✈️🦖
What’s more, there’s another plot twist. Scientists found out that other top predators, called rubidgeine gorgonopsians, checked out even before the main extinction event happened in the Karoo Basin, South Africa. Knowing when these big predators went extinct could help us better understand the ‘Great Dying’.💀🔍
And here’s the million-dollar question: could this knowledge also help us deal with our current climate crisis? After all, the ‘Great
