The discovery of a 4.4 million year old cat skull in Tibet clarifies that big cats originated in Asia and not Africa.
Up until now, it was believed big cats like the leopard originated in parts of Africa. However, a new discovery provides contradicting evidence. Researchers from China and the United States discovered the oldest fossil of a big cat that dates back 4.4 million years, during an excavation in the remote Tibetan Plateau. Previously, the biggest cat fossil was recovered from Tanzania dating from about 3.7 million years ago.
Study leader Jack Tseng of the American Museum of Natural History in New York confirmed that though the cat species isn't a direct ancestor to big cats like tigers, lions and jaguars, it is closely related to the snow leopard, according to a Washington Post report. The species has been newly named Panthera blytheae.
"This cat is a sister of living snow leopards - it has a broad forehead and a short face. But it's a little smaller - the size of clouded leopards," said lead author Dr Jack Tseng of the University of Southern California, in a BBC News report. "These ties up a lot of questions we had on how these animals evolved and spread throughout the world.
Previously biologists have speculated that these big cats may have originated from Asia, there has always been a division between the DNA data and the fossil record. However, this new discovery has clarified these doubts. Researchers confirmed that big cats originated from Asia and then spread to the rest of the world. DNA evidence suggests the new big cat species diverged from its feline cousins including cougars, lynxes, and domestic cats about 6.37 million years ago.
"These fossils are the oldest, but they're by no means the most primitive," Tseng told LiveScience. "There is some big cat out there that has yet to be described."
"The findings are exciting because they corroborate genetic estimates of when cats first emerged, and because the fossils were found near Central Asia, the area where most scientists believe cats first evolved," said Julie Meachen, a paleontologist at Des Moines University in Iowa, who was not involved in the study.
