Oldest big cat fossil

The oldest big cat fossils ever found – from a previously unknown species "similar to a snow leopard" – were unearthed in the Himalayas in 2010. Using anatomical and DNA data, the fossils – named Panthera blytheae – have been dated between 4.1 and 5.95 million years old, which supports the theory that big cats evolved in central Asia – not Africa – and spread outward. Dr Jack Tseng of the University of Southern California, who dug up the fossil, said that the extinct big cat had a broad forehead and a short face, but was a little smaller – the size of a clouded leopard. However, Prof William Murphy of Texas A&M University, another expert on the evolutionary relationship of big cats, said that the claim that the new species was related to the snow leopard was very weakly supported and inconsistent with the DNA-based tree of living cats. In his opinion, it was equally probable that the fossil is ancestral to the living big cats. The "big cats" of the Pantherinae subfamily include lions, jaguars, tigers, leopards, snow leopards and clouded leopards. DNA evidence suggests that they diverged from their cousins the Felinae (a family including cougars, lynxes and domestic cats)about 6.37 million years ago.

Prior to this discovery, the earliest fossils of this kind were just 3.6 million years old - tooth fragments uncovered at Laetoli in Tanzania, the hominin site excavated in the 1970s by paleoanthropologist Mary Leakey (UK, 1913–1996).

The newly found fossils included more than 100 bones including the crushed but largely complete remains of a big cat skull. In all, seven skull fragments were found – belonging to at least three individual cats.

Magnetostratigraphy was used to date the fragments. This technique analyses historical reversals in the Earth's magnetic field recorded in layers of rock. The bones ranged between 4.10 and 5.95 million years old, with the complete skull being dated to about 4.4 million years of age.

Dr Manabu Sakamoto of the University of Bristol stated: "This is a very significant finding - it fills a very wide gap in the fossil record. The discovery presents strong support for the Asian origin hypothesis for the big cats. It gives us a great insight into what early big cats may have looked like and where they may have lived."