New Fossils Shed Light On the Origins of Lions, Tigers, and Bears

Jessica Lim
Mr. Mathieu
Period 2
January 14, 2014

No Author given
Published: January 6, 2014
Article: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140106160029.htm

Summary:   
     At the Belgian locality of Dormaal, new fossils of the species Dormaalocyon was discovered and it is said to be very close to the common ancestor of carnivoraformes; modern mammals. Scientists were able to infer that since it had ankle bones it moved around on trees and lived in them. This species was known to have over 250 teeth. Scientists were able to infer that it was "close to the origin of carnivoraforms" because when they inspected the baby teeth of the species, they were able to tell the scientists that it was from a very early time period.
     When they recreated the environment 55 million years ago, the environment turned out to be really warm and humid because it was after the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, and the evolution of the carnivoraformes and many other species were affected by this. This fossil also shows that there are even more primary species that once lived in an earlier time period.

Connection:   
     This connects to our unit on evolution. We learned about how when there is a change in the environment, through natural selection, those that inherited the most suitable characteristics to survive and reproduce, evolved and adapted to the new environment. We also learned that through either reproductive isolation or geographical isolation, speciation occurs and therefore one species can diverge into multiple species. Connecting to the article, the common ancestor of carnivoraformes eventually diverged into multiple species that we see today, for example cats, dogs, bears, and seals.