interview with Kees van Hooijdonk expert on saber-toothed cats from Rucphen in the Netherlands and co-author of two superb volumes about saber-toothed tiger in Dutch and English
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2006 in El Breal de Orocual in the state of Monagas found in northeastern Venezuela, a tar pit (Tar Pit) with rich fossil content. The most important discovery is the evidence of saber-toothed cat Homotherium of 24 April 2007. This feline species previously not known from South America.
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saber-toothed cats locality El Breal de Orocual in Venezuela
Question: Mr. van Hooijdonk, you were in the scientific investigation of a spectacular South American saber-toothed cat discovered in tar pits of El Breal de Orocual involved in Venezuela - what is special about this find?
Answer: My contribution to the study of the saber-toothed cat is Homotherium from the northeast of Venezuela is very small and limited to the exchange of information on Homotherium crenatidens in Europe (mainly Homotherium Senez, Haute Loire, France, which held in Lyon). Ascanio Rincon, research director of studies at the Finds from Venezuela, has contacted me in early 2008 because of my publications on my web page on the saber-toothed cat Homotherium and the dagger-toothed cat Megantereon from Senez. He was particularly interested in these cats, because he had recovered a Fund, which is made with Homotherium Senez virtually identical. Later Ascanio has traveled even for research at Homotherium to Lyon (France), where the complete skeleton of Homotherium Senez from the University Claude Bernard is kept. In the Museum Histoire Naturelle in Paris, he studied a magnificent skull of Homotherium from Perrier (France). The extraordinary thing about the find from Venezuela is that it is the first find of the saber-toothed cat is Homotherium on the South American continent. This genus was therefore much more widespread than you did before.
* Question: What time is the saber-toothed cats from Venezuela and fund known his geological age in years?
Answer: comparative study with other sites have shown that the fossils from Venezuela have an age of about 1.8 million years ago, what the Early Pleistocene (Early Ice Age) or. But further studies are needed to determine the absolute age.
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fossils of saber-toothed cat Homotherium from Venezuela
question: Which These parts of the skull or skeleton, it is the saber-toothed cat find from Venezuela?
Answer: To find material in Venezuela include a skull, seven pine, two jumping legs, a heel bone, a humerus, a metatarsal bone and some finger joints by at least six, perhaps even seven saber-toothed cats come.
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Question: The saber-toothed cats from Venezuela fund is expected to genus Homotherium , from North America, Asia, Europe, Africa and now also known from South America. Could be calculated at the Fund the size of the animal?
Answer: I do not have exact dimensions of the saber-toothed cat Homotherium from Venezuela. But because it is very similar to the North American way, I think that had Homotherium from Venezuela, the size of a modern lion.
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Question: Differs the saber-toothed cats from Venezuela Fund the saber tooth tigers of Europe, for example from the Netherlands, France and Germany?
Answer: While there are some similarities with a North American Art from the Blancan age in Nebraska, but the muzzle of the saber-toothed cats from Venezuela is a little shorter than usual. Further research will clarify whether one Homotherium from Venezuela to a new subspecies.
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question: are discovered in the tar pits of El Breal Orocual de Venezuela in the remains of contemporaries of the saber-toothed cat Homotherium ?
Answer: The study of thousands of fossils in the Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones CientÃficas show (IVIC), that the findings included in the tar pits of El Bréal de Orocual to a rich fauna, which even included a number of previously unknown in South America, Venezuela and animal species. The first notice of such animals in "The Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology" by Ascanio Rincon and other authors in the year 2007 contains a list of more than 30 animal species, such as armadillo, saber-toothed cat Homotherium , dagger-toothed cat Smilodon , wild boar, wild horses, camels, giant sloth, rhinoceros-like mammal, tapirs, various water birds, alligators and elephants.
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question: How did it happen that you are at the scientific study of the saber-toothed cat discovered in Venezuela involved?
Answer: As I said, my contribution was minimal and limited to the exchange of information. After the identification of Homotherium in May 2008 at a conference on saber-toothed cats the idea for the joint publication called "Remarkable disoveries in a Venezuelan Tar Pit," which was published in December 2009.
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Question: saber-toothed cats and saber-tooth tiger, as they were called earlier, are among the most fascinating predators of prehistoric times. Is known about the lives of these cats all?
Answer: The man knows no means the whole life. This also applies to the cats and saber-toothed cats. Some of the problems still to be resolved are questions of origin and ancestry. New technologies such as DNA testing promote many new views on the origin and ancestry. Another question is how to saber-toothed cats have feeds that is, how could they attack their prey without breaking their long canines.
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question: surely want many readers of this interview, learn more about you in your capacity as a saber-toothed cat expert. Is there a web address where this is possible?
Answer: My Internet Address is: http://www.ijstijd.net - From this website you can follow links to fossils and saber-toothed cats.
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The questions for the interview, the Wiesbaden-based science writer Ernst Probst,
author of the pocket books "cave lions. Wild cats in Ice Age "and" saber-toothed cats. Machairodus of up to Smilodon.
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literature on saber-toothed cats:
book "De Sabeltandtijger uit de Noordzee" (Dutch)
http://www.sabeltandtijger.eu/?lang=nl
book "The Saber-toothed Cat of the North Sea "(English)
http://www.grin.com/e-book/127539/saebelzahnkatzen http://www.sabeltandtijger.eu/?lang=en
book "saber-toothed cat" (German)
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link :
saber tooth tiger Blog
http://saebelzahntiger.blogspot.com
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