Tri-Fanged Titan: Ancient African Monster Unearthed, Once Ruled the Prehistoric Realm!
But though it wasn’t a cat, it was indeed big. Scientists said that it was likely larger than a polar bear, which holds the title for biggest terrestrial carnivorous animal alive today.
Even the teeth of the Simbakubwa alone were startling. Their molars were more than two inches long, while its canine front teeth measured eight inches each, roughly the size of a banana. What’s even more startling, modern-day predators like wolves and bears only have one pair of canine teeth, but the Simbakubwa had three.
“This animal had lots of blades,” Borth said.
As for the size of the rest of the animal, researchers say it was about four feet tall, eight feet long, and weighed in at more than 1.5 tonnes (about the size of a car) — making it bigger than any mammalian carnivore on record today.
“The science is definitely very impressive,” Jack Tseng, an evolutionary biologist who was not involved in the study, said in an interview about the discovery. “Any time you have a new record of something this large in the fauna and ecological food web, it makes you reconsider exactly what the interactions were like between predator and prey.”
Mauricio Anton/National GeographicA size comparison between a Simbakubwa kutokaafrika and a human.
Furthermore, the Simbakubwa helps researchers understand the changing ecosystem that was in place some 20 million years ago, when the landmass of Africa began shifting closer toward Eurasia. The giant geographical shift created a change in environments and animals between the two landmasses began to mix across continents. That kind of ecological exchange “raises all kinds of hell,” Borths said.
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