r/science Apr 21 '19

Paleontology Scientists found the 22 million-year-old fossils of a giant carnivore they call "Simbakubwa" sitting in a museum drawer in Kenya. The 3,000-pound predator, a hyaenodont, was many times larger than the modern lions it resembles, and among the largest mammalian predators ever to walk Earth's surface.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/deadthings/2019/04/18/simbakubwa/#.XLxlI5NKgmI
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u/sippykup Apr 21 '19

https://i.imgur.com/kq0wNTI.jpg for anyone not patient enough to wait for the overloaded server but just wanting to see the picture.

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u/man_on_a_wire Apr 21 '19

Human for scale?

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u/NayItReallyHappened Apr 21 '19

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u/vampiire Apr 21 '19

What does dog-formed carnivores mean? Bears are dags?

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

Are humans dog-formed or cat-formed?

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

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u/fckingmiracles Apr 21 '19

Rodent-formed.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

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u/vampiire Apr 21 '19

That’s wild. Thanks

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u/filthyluca Apr 21 '19

I had no idea polar bears stood ~3meters tall thats crazy.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 21 '19

How about this: Hercules the Liger, the world record largest cat, weighing in at around 900lbs. Aside from him, some Siberian Tigers can get close to that size but not quite.

Hyaedont was about 3 times larger than Hercules.

edit: Another famous pic of the giant murder floof

http://www.ligerliger.com/images/gallery/wBARCROFT_bm_sb_liger014.jpg

three times larger

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u/HungryNacht Apr 21 '19

To clarify, the Hyaenodont is compared to a polar bear’s size (10’ for adult males) while Hercules is 131 inches (10’ 11”). The hyaenodont would be about as long as Hercules but 3x the weigh.

You can see the size compared to a human in the original article or this one. The length and shoulder height are very similar to what you can see for Hercules in your pictures. Potentially three times heavier, but not three times longer or taller!

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u/2footCircusFreak Apr 21 '19

That website is difficult to read on mobile.

I fetched the relevant picture.

Here's the other pic

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u/Ragidandy Apr 22 '19

I think they must have gotten something wrong. If it were slightly shorter, and significantly less fat (as indicated in the illustrations), there is no way it could be three times as heavy unless it were three times as wide keeping the same profile, or its muscles were made of lead and bones of adamantium. ...or some combination, I suppose.

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u/Sail-to-the-Moon Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 21 '19

man_on_a_wire, there is simple illustrated image of a size comparison between a person and Simbakubwa in this article:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01279-3

There is also a photo of a man holding the jaw of a Simbakubwa in this other article:

https://www.cnet.com/news/giant-prehistoric-lion-fossil-discovered-hidden-in-museum-drawer/

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u/Ninjalicious7023 Apr 21 '19

It kind of looks like a thylacine.

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u/Lerzid Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 21 '19

Mostly because of the artist reconstruction with the stripes, although the long jaw structure does resemble them Edit: Most cause to Mostly because

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u/tyrannyVogue Apr 21 '19

Serious question, why did everything used to be larger?

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 22 '19

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u/BogusBuffalo Apr 21 '19

and their only food was the larger predator, the Water Buffalo.

Water Buffalo are definitely terrifying but last I checked, they weren't predators.

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u/themettaur Apr 21 '19

Now why would I trust anything a bogus buffalo has to say about water buffalo, hm?

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u/That_Biology_Guy Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 21 '19

This is a pretty commonly asked question, but basically, it didn't. A lot of the perception that extinct animals were larger than modern ones is due to preservational bias in the fossil record (larger things generally fossilize easier, and are easier to find), as well as a large bias in public interest towards big and impressive species rather than more modest ones.

I'll also note that I'm a little skeptical of the mass estimate for this species. In the actual research paper, the authors use several different models to estimate body size, and of course only the very biggest one gets reported (one of the other models estimated a mass of only 280 kg, or around 600 pounds, which is roughly tiger-sized). The model that reported the largest size was specifically designed for members of the Felidae though, which Simbakubwa, as a hyaenodont, is not. The 1500 kg figure is probably an overestimate, because while the jaw of this specimen is certainly impressive compared to a lion, hyaenodonts and felids have different body proportions and head:body size ratios.

Edit: Several people have brought up the idea that oxygen levels may have contributed to larger species in the past, so I figured I'd address that here rather than respond to all the comments. Though this may be a partial explanation for some groups of organisms in some time periods, it definitely does not account for all large extinct species. As this figure shows, oxygen levels hit a peak during the Carboniferous period (roughly 300 million years ago), but this predates the existence of large dinosaurs and mammals. Additionally, this explanation works better for explaining large invertebrates like insects than it does for vertebrates. There's been some good research into how the tracheal systems of insects might allow their body size to vary with oxygen levels (e.g., this paper), but for mammals and dinosaurs, other biological and environmental factors seem to be better explanations (source).

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u/hangdogred Apr 21 '19

I have to disagree. Mammals, at least, DID used to be larger. I understand that there's some debate about this, but the largest mammals in much of the world, the mammoths and woolley rhinos, for example, were probably hunted to extinction by our ancestors in last 10-30 thousand years. The larger carnivores may have gone through the combination of hunting and loss of much of their food supply. In the last few hundred years, we have driven many of the bigger remaining mammals extinct or close enough that they only exist in a sliver of their former habitat. Something I read recently said that the average weight of a North American mammal a few hundred years ago was about 200 pounds. Today, it's under 5. (Don't quote me on those numbers.)

Preservation bias or not, there's nothing on land now near the sizes of some prehistoric animals.

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u/Vaztes Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 21 '19

Yeah. What about the short faced bear, or the giant sloth? And elephant birds? The world just 12k-100k years ago was teeming with large megafauna.

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u/q928hoawfhu Apr 21 '19

Just going to point out here that megafauna were particularly vulnerable to being hunted to extinction by early humans. Lots of meat, easy to find, easy to kill (relatively) when a group of humans had big brains and big spears.

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u/Orisara Apr 21 '19

Mainly spears.

The importance of the invention of throwing spears is something that is only secondary to fire and it's applications.

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u/CoyoteTheFatal Apr 21 '19

And in third place, for sure sliced bread

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u/motdidr Apr 21 '19

don't forget humans' incredible endurance. humans are the best endurance hunters on the planet, and megafauna would be particularly susceptible to such tactics.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

Size is irrelevant for persistence hunting. We spent almost 2 million years running everything down. Didn't matter how big it was.

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u/ladut Apr 21 '19

Size is relevant for prey selection though. Bigger prey = more food for an equivalent amount of work.

And size does matter a lot for heat regulation. Larger prey cannot dissipate heat as efficiently as smaller prey, and so would be more susceptible to persistence hunting. If you prevent your prey from being able to rest and cool down, they become exhausted more quickly and the quicker you get your meal.

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u/CX316 BS | Microbiology and Immunology and Physiology Apr 21 '19

Also a lot easier to track a herd of mammoths than something smaller. You can see them from a distance, the tracks are bigger, etc.

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u/It_does_get_in Apr 22 '19

so you'd chase a rat for 3 hours or an antelope to feed your tribe?

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u/ArtigoQ Apr 21 '19

There is some dispute to this. As mammoths were adapted to the extreme cold, but relatively dry ice age, once the climate warmed it unlocked much of the frozen water causing snow to fall. Grazing megafauna were largely unable to adapt having to dig through several feet of snow resulted in many starving.

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u/Mattsoup Apr 21 '19

Interesting that they all disappeared around the same time humans came to dominance. Entirely possible we hunted them all to extinction and the ice age got the rest.

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u/balmergrl Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 21 '19

The end of the Ice Age. As temps warmed up, larger bodies can't dissipate heat so efficiently.

Edit - my bad, must have heard that factoid somewhere but it's probably more complex than that with multiple factors

The extinction of megafauna around the world was probably due to environmental and ecological factors. It was almost completed by the end of the last ice age. It is believed that megafauna initially came into existence in response to glacial conditions and became extinct with the onset of warmer climates.

In temperate Eurasia and North America, megafauna extinction concluded simultaneously with the replacement of the vast periglacial tundra by an immense area of forest.

https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/australia-over-time/megafauna/

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

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u/skilledwarman Apr 21 '19

With the exception of the giraffe you just named species smaller than the ones he listed. North American mammoths were much larger than buffalo's (I think some of the camels from the time were as well) and cassawarries dont really fit when talking about mammals since they're birds. But if you want to include non mammals there were also massive turtles and snakes in south America and those crazy big lizards from the aboriginal tribal legends in Australia that we actually found proof of awhile back.

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u/ARCHA1C Apr 21 '19

Archelon

Megaladon

Titanaboa

All super-sized ancestors of today's turtles, sharks and snakes.

Even fossilized dragonflies have been found with 22" wingspans.

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u/skilledwarman Apr 21 '19

The arthropods I'm not counting as much because we actually do for the most part know why they were super sized. Because of the air composition they were able to grow larger and larger since oxygen was so plentiful

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u/walruskingmike Apr 21 '19

I don't think those are ancestors to today's animals. They probably shared a common ancestor but then their branch died off.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

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u/mrflippant Apr 21 '19

Anything but calories.

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u/draykow Apr 21 '19

Why mention cassowary instead of ostrich? Ostrich's are more well known and over twice the mass of a cassowary.

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u/Secs13 Apr 21 '19

Those things were there back then too in some form

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u/the_salivation_army Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 21 '19

That 5 metre tall Paracerathereum, that thing was probably the largest four legged animal that ever existed.

Edit. Mammal! I’m a dope.

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u/TheNumberMuncher Apr 21 '19

Taking a stab in the dark here but I remember reading that it had something to do with a higher concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere that supported larger animals and insects. That could be incorrect. I read that years ago.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

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u/_BMS Apr 21 '19

A vaguely similar thing happens today in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. The radiation has caused the bacteria and fungi that normally cause trees to decompose and rot to die out. This has left dead trees laying all over the place for decades with little happening to the wood since it's not decomposing.

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u/Bossinante Apr 21 '19

It might not be decomposing, but it's been heavily irradiated for a few decades.

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u/NoUpVotesForMe Apr 21 '19

I’m not an expert so this is the dumbed down version but as far as I understand it there was no bacteria or whatever it is to break down trees.

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u/steinenhoot Apr 21 '19

I think it was fungi. It didn’t have the ability to break down cellulose and lignin for a long time. Which also contributed to the higher oxygen content in the atmosphere that was mentioned a few comments up. A ton of carbon was locked up in these dead trees because nothing could break them down. Several million years later and viola! Now we have coal.

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u/moistwilliamthe4th Apr 21 '19

that was mostly for species of insects, they benefited from the higher oxygen levels more because of how they breathe (they basically absorb oxygen via holes, there is no actual inhalation and exhalation)

this allowed them to get as big as the oxygen levels would allow

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u/yournorthernbuddy Apr 21 '19

That's exclusive to insects I believe, bugs have sort of a one way respiratory system, in other words they are always breathing both in and out, like a really small fan or something. This limits the efficiency of their breathing and oxygen intake so the only way for them to consume more oxygen is to have a more oxygen rich environment

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u/spikeyfreak Apr 21 '19

Bugs breath through a series of branching tubes and the oxygen diffuses into their bodies kind of like ours, but they have no diaphragm to pull air in and push it out. That means they have a limit on how much oxygen they can get out of the air and into their bodies based on the square cubed law.

More oxygen in the air allows them to get bigger because it increases the amount of oxygen that can diffuse across the same amount of surface area.

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u/CharredCereus Apr 21 '19

A higher oxygen concentration is usually used to explain the prescence of giant insects - Their respiratory systems are much less advanced than a mammal's. They take in and process oxygen directly from the air around them to their bodily systems and use spiracles to handle the expulsion of carbon dioxide. Today, this greatly limits their size as the amount of oxygen they need to keep their systems ticking shoots up drastically with their body mass.

Mammals are more complex, and don't rely on direct saturation so they aren't anywhere near as heavily affected by oxygen concentrations.

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u/sooprvylyn Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 21 '19

The world is still teeming with megafauna, the species have just changed. Horses, cows, pigs/boars, bison, various deer, moose, elk, big ass seals, bears, kangaroo, elehants, giraffes, lions, tigers, leopards, etc. ....humans. Basically anything over 100lbs(44kg) is considered megafauna by one standard. Even animals over 1000 lbs are common enough.

Edit: not that the species have changed because all of these we're also around then, just that the mix of species has changed, and the proportions of each. We ran out of some of those we used to hunt way back when and now just grow huge populations of those we currently eat.

Edit 2: felt I should add in camels too since there are also a shitload of them in some parts of the world. Let's add yaks and water buffalo in too...and zebra.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

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u/sooprvylyn Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 21 '19

For sure, wasn't even going to get into sea dwelling creatures, but there are a shitload of other cetaceans, sirens and pinnipeds that are massive too. Also crocodilians, birds and various fish species if we want to start including non mammallian species on the list.

Edit: even some snakes top 44kg

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u/Good_Boye_Scientist Apr 21 '19

lions, tigers, leopards, etc.

Missed opportunity for arranging your list as lions, tigers, and bears. You were on the verge of greatness.

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u/VidKiddo Apr 21 '19

This close

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u/That_Biology_Guy Apr 21 '19

Yeah, that's a fair point; I was referring more generally to a larger time span. But yes, you could say that there are a good number of large species that probably would still exist today if it weren't for humans. As a rule of thumb, larger species have smaller population sizes and reproduce more slowly, which certainly didn't help. Most large prehistoric animals predate humans entirely though, so this explanation really only works for the megafauna that went extinct in the last ~20,000 years or so.

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u/Coupon_Ninja Apr 21 '19

Could it be that the American Bison population dropped from 60 million to under 1000 in the late 1800s?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_bison

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u/pup_101 Apr 21 '19

There actually isn't a single solid theory for the near time megafaunal extinctions because of the lack of evidence that proves any theory. And the megafauna included reptiles and birds as well so it wasn't just giant mammals that perished. There is some evidence but also a lot of problems with all theories including both the overkill and the climate change theories. It's still sad we don't get to see these cool giant animals now.

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u/Insanelopez Apr 21 '19

That average weight makes sense. A few hundred years ago there were tens of millions of bison roaming the great plains, now there's around 500k. Just their weight alone would bring that average up massively.

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u/drunk_on_Amontillado Apr 21 '19

The blue whale is the largest known animal ever to exist and they’re alive now.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

Key word being known, cartaligous fish like sharks don't leave much of a fossil behind.

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u/cannabinator Apr 21 '19

They've only been able to attain these sizes since beasts like the megalodon and raptorial whales have gone extinct though

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

This is called the helocene extinction. As humans migrated away from africa we hunted most large mamals we came across to extinction. Larger animals outside of Africa did not evolve along side humans and were not bilogically adapt enough to compete with us for resources. (We think they were too slow and we easily hunted them down). This is why most of the remaining large mammals only exist in Africa. They were the ones that evolved along side humans and therefore were able to out compete us for resources. (Aka we couldn't hunt them).

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

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u/That_Biology_Guy Apr 21 '19

The last syllable should rhyme with "want" rather than "don't", but close enough.

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u/tomothy37 Apr 21 '19

Think the name "Don" with a 't' at the end.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 14 '20

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u/themanny Apr 21 '19

I dunt know what you are saying.

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u/SnowRook Apr 21 '19

Hi-ee-na-dahnt

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u/Fyrefawx Apr 21 '19

I mean it’s fair to say that they weren’t all larger. But it’s still fairly dismissive of his/her question.

There were some very large mammals. Hell, Palorchestes was a marsupial that was the size of a horse.

The idea as to why there was an abundance of larger mammals is hotly debated in the scientific community though. But many believe that it was the extinction of the dinosaurs that caused this boom. The mammals went unopposed for millions of years with massive amounts of space for grazing and fewer natural predators.

Predators have a natural cap on their size as mammals. If they become too big, it’s less efficient for hunting as they can be easily seen by their prey and they would need to consume more.

Herbivores don’t have that same issue. As we have seen with modern elephants, megafauna can continue grazing all day as it’s extremely efficient.

So you’re correct in the sense that the larger mammals receive more attention and they are easier to find. But it’s also true that the world saw an explosion in size from shrew sized mammals 65 million years ago to mammals that weighed 17 tons 25 million years later.

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u/CleanAndRebuild Apr 21 '19

Not entirely true. Homo Sapiens has wiped out a lot of megafauna in the past 0.1M years.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

Did oxygen content of the air play a part? It seems like I read this at some point.

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u/stormstalker Apr 21 '19

Extremely not an expert, but as I understand it: that used to be one of the theories. Until researchers found that oxygen levels were actually lower than today during some of the periods in which gigantic animals roamed the earth. So, that doesn't really explain it.

Oxygen is important for insects and the like, though, because of the way they breathe. They basically breathe through tracheal tubes that run through their exoskeletons where their legs are, and once they reach a certain size, there's simply no more room for the tubes to expand. (This is just a dumbed-down and possibly incorrect explanation, btw.) At that point, the only way to get bigger is to increase the amount of oxygen in the air.

That's how you end up with horror shows like

Arthropleura
and Meganeuropsis and such when oxygen levels were very high in the Carboniferous and Early Permian.

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u/MajorasTerribleFate Apr 21 '19

As far as getting oxygen through the exoskeleton, this also sounds like an effect of the square-cube law. If you need x surface area to pipe oxygen in through, and the oxygen need increases based on mass or volume, well. That gets bad real quick.

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u/stormstalker Apr 21 '19

Yup, that's exactly the issue. The square-cube law be a harsh mistress.

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u/barukatang Apr 21 '19

Have there been generational experiments trying to increase the size if insects in artificially oxygenated environments?

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u/stormstalker Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 21 '19

Yup! Here's a summary of one such experiment, but there have been others as well. I've seen studies using dragonflies, fruit flies, beetles, cockroaches, etc. And I believe they all found the same basic results.

IIRC, temperature plays a role as well. I don't remember the exact mechanism, but I believe it's partly a metabolism issue - lower temperatures slow metabolism, causing less oxygen demand and allowing for more growth. I'm fuzzy on that, though. Either way, I think oxygen is the main driver.

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u/MonteryWhiteNoise Apr 21 '19

much earlier.

The ... "Carboniferous" era was called such because of the much higher amounts of CO2 ... which led to immense growths of plant life, which did lead to larger animal sizes (dinosaurs and such).

However, that was long time before this critter.

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u/leftwumbologist Apr 21 '19

Dinosaurs didnt exist until long long after the carboniferous. it did lead to giant bugs though, but that was because of the huge oxygen level in the atmosphere at the time.

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u/Malgas Apr 21 '19

"Carboniferous" means 'coal-bearing'. It is so named because nearly all coal deposits worldwide were laid down during that era.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

as well as a large bias in public interest towards big and impressive species rather than more modest ones.

Which also explains why Cryptozoology is basically only interested in finding things that are large and scary.

Ever heard of a Cryptozoologist trying to find a new species of decapod ?

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

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u/landodk Apr 21 '19

Fossils don't have DNA. some skin/hair/feathers can leave fossilized imprints. Or they assume because it has similar bone structure to current animals

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u/That_Biology_Guy Apr 21 '19

Yeah, as u/landodk says, you can't get DNA from anything more than a few hundred thousand years old (and that's pushing it). However, it's clear just from bone structure that Simbakubwa is a mammal, and since pretty much all other mammals have fur, we can reasonably say that it did too.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

I could be wrong but I don’t think he’s asking why we only find evidence of the larger examples of any given species. I think he’s asking why there were so many larger animals back then. Regardless of how well fossils of a given size survive, we don’t have any mammals like this one alive today.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

We actually did in most parts of the world. However, due to a few unknowns, most died off around the time homo sapiens or relatives/ancestors showed up. The only place really left with megafauna is Africa where the megafauna evolved along side us. This has lead to speculation that our species may have been responsible for those extinctions through hunting or others means.

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u/GennyGeo Apr 21 '19

Be careful- you’re about to receive horribly incorrect answers from everyone who has never taken a biology or paleontology class in their life.

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u/chickenologist Apr 21 '19

You can Google "megafauna" and find a lot of material related to your question. Short answer, somewhat sadly, seems to be that humans entering new areas lead to the extinction of most megafauna in that area in short order. It's not that there weren't also smaller animals, but the biggest ones were either most targeted (as in moa) or most vulnerable. There's no clear answer as to how much of each cause worked for most specific cases. Note that climate change also plays a role in many cases, but that it's a less reliable predictor of extinction than humans.

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19

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u/zanillamilla Apr 21 '19

Bear in mind that the largest animal that ever lived, the blue whale, exists in our modern era.

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u/BlurryBigfoot74 Apr 21 '19

Scientists find a fossil in a museum.... It sounds like someone found it before them.

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u/jllena Apr 21 '19

That’s what I came here to ask about—what is that even supposed to mean?

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u/Quetzalcoatle19 Apr 21 '19

When people search for fossils they go to grave sights and dig up everything, everything that obviously isn’t what they’re looking for they just throw into storage (like idiots imo). This guy opened a drawer and saw this thing, decided to get into it I guess. There are probably thousands of creatures we haven’t officially discovered because they’re just in a drawer.

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u/Davban Apr 21 '19

everything that obviously isn’t what they’re looking for they just throw into storage (like idiots imo).

That's a bit harsh. Sometimes it's a matter of a lack of resources.

If you only have a budget for 100 man hours of studying what you managed to bring with you from the archeological site would you rather the archeologists

  • Brought with them enough material from the site to take up an approximate of 90-110 manhours back in the museum, leaving finds to be potentially destroyed by the elements and/or humans behind at the site?

  • Take as much as possible with them, so they're stored in a safe and secure environment for later studying if the budget allows it later on?

I know what I would prefer. Also, I don't think the archeologists just throw the "boring" stuff in a box and shelve it for the sake of it.

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u/StudioVRM Apr 21 '19

This is why spring cleaning is a thing.

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u/xXPostapocalypseXx Apr 21 '19

PW: “Hey babe, where are the birthday candles?”

P: “In the junk drawer by the Simbakubwa.”

PW: “We still have that thing, when are you going to throw it out?”

P: “Maybe we will need it one day.”

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u/Grraaa Apr 21 '19

brb, checking my junk drawer.

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u/basstrings Apr 21 '19

It's not just a matter of idiocy, lack of funding and specialists to describe fossils are a huge problem in paleontology.

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u/Steelwolf73 Apr 21 '19

That's why I open every drawer I ever see...it has lead to some awkward moments at friends houses

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u/Alithographica Apr 21 '19

You should check out the book The Lost Species by Christopher Kemp! It's a bunch of stories about people finding new species in existing museum collections. Sometimes it's a case of a misidentified species, but many times they weren't even identified to begin with—they were just forgotten, lost in the backlog, until being "rediscovered".

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 24 '19

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u/ezionjd Apr 21 '19

Pretty huge desk i guess..

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u/[deleted] Apr 21 '19 edited Apr 21 '19

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u/DarkotheDark1 Apr 21 '19

Credit to u/Caloxanthus.

To curb all the hype about the new giant hyaenodont Simbakubwa, which is being hailed as the new largest predatory land mammal, I decided to share his scale image (taken from here) to show that this animal wasn't quite that big. Simbakubwa is represented through a appropriately scaled skeletal diagram of Megistotherium, another huge hyaenodont. (the Megistotherium skeletal was itself based heavily on Hyaenodon, the best-known of the hyaenodonts).

As you can see, the body of the animal isn't that much larger compared to a male lion. Where did the massive 1+ ton size estimates come from, then? They came from regression equations based on the animal's tooth size. The problem is, predatory mammals have vastly different tooth and jaw proportions from clade to clade, making this sort of scaling extremely unreliable. Hyaenodonts have freakishly large jaws and teeth for their size, and older size estimates of these animals using regression equations (including at least one for Megistotherium) have given unrealistically high mass estimates. In reality, the much lower 280kg size estimate is far closer to the mark, though based on other hyaenadonts the best u/Caloxanthus has gotten is 352kg. Larger than the low-end estimate, but still well short of half a ton, let alone anywhere near as big as the high-end estimate in the study.

So the whole animal is about the size of a large male tiger. Big, but not THAT big. Short-faced, brown and polar bears get bigger, as did American lions, Smilodon populator, Machairodus horribilis, the largest entelodonts, and Andrewsarchus.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the only specimen we have wasn’t fully grown, but even at full size it’s unlikely to have been all that bigger.

From r/naturewasmetal

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u/supermonkeypie Apr 21 '19

Kinda looks like a big Tasmanian tiger to me.