A brand fresh metal money of cat-o'-nine-tails has been found in a fossil from a cave in China . Reportedly humble enough to have correspond in the medal of your mitt , the cat – namedPrionailurus kurteni – is thought to have coexisted alongside ancient people .
Prionailurus kurteniwas discover from a fragment of jaw bone in Hualongdong Cave and is believed to be between 275,000 and 331,000 eld old . It is also believe to go to the all-inclusive group know as the Panthera pardus cats , of which several metal money still outlast today .
The team believe that the new species " represents the smallest known fossil member of the family Felidae to date " and is comparable , though potentially even smaller than , aliveness species such as therusty - spotted cat(Prionailurus rubiginosus ) and theblack - hoof cat(Felis nigripes),which are some of the smallest extant member of the Felidae house .
" This cat is clearly small than a domesticated cat . It is like to the modest surviving cat , [ at around ] 1 kilogram [ 2.2 pounds ] , " lead author Qigao Jiangzuo , toldLive Science .
Findingcat fossilsin this sphere is rare because the bones are often humble and fragile and are not preserved well . Most previously discovered fogy , including this one , come from teething or jaw bones , which make describe the mintage and its human relationship tricky .
However , Hualongdong Cave is something of a hot situation ; it has been the beginning of a variety of fossils featured inprevious subject field . The cave contained the remains ofancient humans , brown bears , and lots of arvicolids – a mathematical group contain lemming , species of voles , and muskrat . The presence of these additional fogy led the team to believe that the arena was colder than other similar locations in south China , and also to speculate about the relationship between the Modern cat species and the ancient humans that live there .
" The food food waste these archaic human entrust at the Hualongdong land site might have attracted rats and pocket-size leopard cats as well , " Jiangzuo toldChina Daily . " It ’s undecipherable whether these cats make part of the cave dwellers ' diet , due to the absence of butchery marks on the fossils , " he sum up .
The angle of one of the teeth also suggests that this new metal money could provide a linkup between the leopard cats and the common ancestor of the domestic cat , as well as the famously grumpy - lookingPallas ’s cat(Otocolobus Pallas’s cat ) .
" We plan to systematically follow the fossil computerized tomography in China and around the world , which were not well study in the past . We hope to trace the origins and past diversity of the cat family , ” Jiangzuo differentiate Live Science .
The survey is publish inAnnales Zoologici Fennic .
