Tri-Fanged Titan: Ancient African Monster Unearthed, Once Ruled the Prehistoric Realm!
The bones he encountered belonged to a newly named species, Simbakubwa kutokaafrika, which is part of the hyaenodonts’ family tree and is believed to have been an apex predator of prehistoric sub-Saharan Africa.
“Opening a museum drawer, we saw a row of gigantic meat-eating teeth, clearly belonging to a species new to science,” Borth, who is the curator of the Division of Fossil Primates at Duke University, said in a statement.
The fossils had originally been dug up between 1978 and 1980 in Meswa Bridge, western Kenya. The original team was focused on looking for ancient apes, so the bones ended up untouched among the Nairobi museum’s collections for decades.
Borths teamed up with fellow paleontologist Nancy Stevens, who had discovered a separate batch of fossils in Tanzania that were estimated to be a couple million years older. The two began analyzing the neglected fossils and describing the specimens. The collection of unknown remains included parts of the animal’s jaw, skeleton, skull, and teeth.
Now, their study of the fossils has been published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology and it’s clear that they’ve classified a new — and terrifying — prehistoric beast.
Matthew Borths/National GeographicFossils of the Simbakubwa kutokaafrika.
Still, not much is known about ancient predators like the Simbakubwa. We do know that, though its name was derived from the Swahili word for “big lion,” this mega predator was actually not a big cat. In fact, the researchers found that it was the oldest known member of the hyaenodonts family, which is not a cat family.
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