Comments on: Thylacoleo carnifex: Super-Predator

by: Sordes

Sun, 11 May 2008 08:40:42 +0000

There were very big asynchronous extinctions of megafauna over the world. In Australia nearly all big animals died out about 40.000 years ago, and not about 11-13.000 years ago. This continent was populated some thousand years earlier by humans, and it seems that they burned wide areas of the savanahs and woods which are today desert. North-and South-American megafauna became extinct just shortly after humans colonized this continents, but in South-America several megafauna-animals survived a bit longer. On the West-Indies several megafauna like the various small ground sloth became all just extinct after the population of the islands by humans, with a lot of late holocene extinctions.
The reason why Asia and Africa has remained most of its big animals is most probably because those continents were already populated by early humans and hominids from a very early time on, and the animals could develop their behavior to protect themselves.

by: crgintx

Thu, 08 May 2008 01:32:58 +0000

There was a huge decline in megafauna all throughout the world 11-13.5k years ago. Humans may have finished off the megafauna but they were well on their way to extinction long before humans arrived. If human hunter gatherers are responsible for wiping out the megafauna, why aren’t wild elephants and other large creatures extinct in Africa or Asia? This has always seemed to be the least supportable statement I’ve ever heard from the anti-hunting crowd. Smilodon died out because its prey died out, I suspect Carnifex died out the same way. Both modern lions and tigers are of similar size to most Smilidon species but are much less specialized hunters and survived the mass extinction which killed off megafauna and its predators.

by: cryptidsrus

Wed, 07 May 2008 00:15:31 +0000

I agree with MattBille.

This is not like Diego from Ice Age.

Good article.

by: MattBille

Tue, 06 May 2008 14:57:24 +0000

I’ve not heard of a vegetarian lifestyle idea. Wroe wrote a few years ago that Thylacoleo had teeth “like bolt cutters” to go with heavily muscled forelimbs like those of a jaguar.
Either way, T. carnifex seems too large to account for the yarri, or Queensland tigercat, reported by George Sharp and others. There were smaller, leopard-size relatives that would have been more adaptable as well as more suited to the descriptions of the tiger-cat (leaving out Rilla Martin’s photo, since I have no idea what that is). Sharp wrote that the skin he examiend belonged to a cat which had stood about 18 inches high in life, though there’s no way to know if that was a full-grown animal.

by: Sordes

Tue, 06 May 2008 14:13:50 +0000

This was at a very early time, when some paleontologists thaugt it used its teeth to crack nuts. But already Richard Owen recogniced that it was one of the most formidable predators which ever lived. Sabertooth cats as well as Thylacoleonids had a highly reduced set of teeth, with only very few but therefore extremely big molars and premolars which were used to slice through meat. Among modern carnivores big cats like lions or tigers have the most developed carnassial teeth to slice the meat of their usually big prey, but compared to those of Thylacoleo they look small.

by: DWA

Tue, 06 May 2008 12:08:20 +0000

I find the following statement interesting:

“Both had hyper-carnivorous teeth, designed to eat meat and nothing else.”

I had thought that Thylacoleo was originally thought to be an herbivore based on its teeth; only wear and use-striation patterns characteristic of carnivores changed that view.

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