Scientists have discovered the smallest feline that ever existed, it is 300 thousand years old

The fossil remains of a tiny felinecertainly the smallest ever to have existed, were found by a research group led by Chinese Academy of Sciences in the cave of Hualongdong (China), where scientists are studying humans who lived there 30,000 years ago. The animal lived approximately 300 thousand years ago.

The feline is as big as a palm by hand and the fossil, the smallest known of the dei family Felidae to this day, it was found in a cave where a family of 20 lived about 30,000 years ago. The researchers managed to demonstrate that the find, a fragment of the lower jaw, belonged to a feline belonging to a species called Prionailurus kurteni.

According to the researchers, the feline was much smaller than modern leopard cats (Prionailurus bengalensiswild felines of Asia), while it was comparable in size to the rusty spotted cat (Prionailurus rubiginosus) of South Asia et al Felis nigripescommonly known as the black-footed cat, found in Africa (these are two of the smallest modern catswith a maximum head and body length of approximately 48 and 52 cm respectively).

We found no signs of cuts left by humans on the jaw, so it’s unclear whether it did part of ancient man’s diet or whether he died here by accident – explains Jiangzuo Qigao, first author of the work, to the South China Morning Post – The food scraps of the ancients in the Hualongdong cave may have attracted mice, which attracted small leopard cats to the area

Molecular biologists have confirmed that leopard cats share a common ancestor with their domestic counterparts and the Pallas’s catanother small wild cat with a head-body length of up to 65 cm, but no fossil evidence has been found so far. According to the researchers, the newly identified fossil provides the first evidence to support this theory.

Understanding the animals around Hualongdong Cave could tell us what food ancient humans had access to and what dangers they faced – the scientists write – These findings are important for us to reconstruct the evolution of human beings

After digging in the cave for more than 10 years, in addition to the fossils of 20 ancient humans and their stone artifacts, archaeologists found the fossilized remains of more than 80 species of vertebratesincluding long-extinct mammals and reptiles, including ancient pandas and stegodonts, related to modern elephants.

The most popular hypothesis about their origin is that many of the remains came from animals that did not live near the cave, which suggests that they were transported there from somewhere else, perhaps from great distances.

The work was published on Phoenician Zoological Annales.

Sources: South China Morning Post / Phoenician Zoological Annales