Athena Review Image Archive ™
Sauroctonus skeleton
Skeleton of Sauroctonus (after Gebauer 2007)
Sauroctonus
was a Late Permian gorgonopsian carnivore first described from the
Northern Dvina region in Russia (Tatarinov 1974), and also found dating
from the Wuchiapingian
phase (260-251 mya) in the Ruhuhu Valley in Tanzania. Gebauer
(2007) has made a detailed comparison between Sauroctonus and the Late Pleistocene saber-toothed cat Smilodon fatalis, which had similar body lengths of about 2 meters.
In spite of the fact that they are separated by at least 230 million years, and that Sauroctonus still retained some reptilian features in its lower jaw, skull, and skeleton, while Smilodon
was an advanced mammal, there are some intriguingly close functional
parallels between these two extinct carnivores, both in teeth and jaw
forms, and the musculature of jaw movements used in catching and eating
prey. Sauroctonus in all probability occupied the same ecological niche as did the saber-toothed cat Smilodon.
References:
Gebauer, E.V.I. 2007 . Phylogeny and evolution of the Gorgonopsia with a special reference to the skull and skeleton of GPIT/RE/7113 ('Aelurognathus?' parringtoni). Ph.D. thesis, Tübingen: Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen.
Tatarinov, I. P. 1974. Theriodonts of the USSR. Tr. Paleont. Inst. Akad. Nauk SSSR, 143: 1-240.
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