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Important scientific finds don’t always come in the biggest, buzziest packages. Sometimes new discoveries come in little ugly rocks. Such is the case of a 6-centimeter-wide, nondescript mass of bone and teeth that helped a scientist at The University of Texas at Austin expand the geographic footprint of a large cat that roamed the Earth tens of thousands of years ago.<\/p>\n
“You can’t even tell what it is, let alone which animal it came from,” said John Moretti, a doctoral student at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences who led research. “It’s like a geode. It’s ugly on the outside, and the treasure is all inside.”<\/p>\n
The research was published in the May issue of The Anatomical Record.<\/em><\/p>\n The fossil looks like a lumpy, rounded rock with a couple of exposed teeth that are a little worse for wear, having been submerged and tumbled along the floor of the Gulf of Mexico for thousands of years before washing up on a beach. But when the fossil was X-rayed at the Jackson School’s University of Texas Computed Tomography Lab, Moretti saw there was more to the fossil that met the eye: a hidden canine tooth that had not yet erupted from the jaw bone.<\/p>\n It was just what Moretti needed to identify the fossil as belonging to a Homotherium<\/em>, a genus of large cat that roamed much of the Earth for millions of years. Because this specific cat wasn’t fully grown when it died, its distinctive saber-like canine tooth had not fallen into its permanent position. Nestled inside the jaw, the tooth was protected from the elements.<\/p>\n “Had that saber tooth been all the way erupted and fully in its adult form, and not some awkward teenage in-between stage, it would have just snapped right off,” Moretti said. “It wouldn’t have been there, and we wouldn’t have that to use as evidence.”<\/p>\n Homotherium<\/em> spanned across habitats in Africa, Eurasia and the Americas. It was a large, robust cat about the size of a jaguar, with an elongated face, lanky front legs, and a sloping back that ended in a bobtail. Their serrated canine teeth were covered by large gum flaps, similar to domestic dogs today.<\/p>\n Their fossils have been found in several areas of Texas, but this fossil shows for the first time that the big cat roamed the now-submerged continental shelf that connects Texas and Florida. Scientists hypothesize that this stretch of land was a Neotropical corridor. Animals such as capybaras and giant armadillos that wouldn’t have ventured farther north used this strip of humid grassland to move from Mexico to Texas to Florida.<\/p>\n The discovery that Homotherium<\/em> lived along this corridor gives scientists a small glimpse into the ecology of this landscape during the Late Pleistocene, Moretti said. Big carnivores such as these cats helped shape the broader animal community, tamping down prey-animal populations and influencing regional biodiversity.<\/p>\n The fossil specimen was discovered more than 60 years ago on McFaddin Beach, south of Beaumont, by Russell Long, a professor at Lamar University, but was donated by U.S. Rep. Brian Babin, a former student of Long’s who worked for 38 years as a dentist. Babin said that his training in paleontology and dentistry helped him recognize that what seems like a strange rock at first glance is actually an upper jaw bone and teeth.<\/p>\n “Without question, my professional knowledge and what I’ve learned as a dentist helped me in that regard,” he said.<\/p>\n The research is part of a larger initiative on McFaddin Beach fossils started in 2018 by William Godwin, curator at the Sam Houston State University Natural Science Museum and a co-author of the study. Co-authors also include Deanna Flores, Christopher J. Bell, Adam Hartstone-Rose, and Patrick J. Lewis. The research was funded by UT, Sam Houston State University and North Carolina State University.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n