Alex Trelinski
THE fossil of a pre-dinosaur carnivore dating back 270 million years has been discovered in Mallorca’s Tramuntana mountains.
The appearance of the gorgonopsio named since it looks like the face of a gorgon, is not unsimilar to that of a dog without ears or hairs.
The sabre-toothed creature gave rise to the first mammals some 50 million years later.
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Details about the find have been published in Nature Communication after work by researchers from the Miquel Crusafont Catalan Institute of Palaeontology and the Balearic Museum of Natural Sciences(MBCN).
The find has been described as ‘exceptional’, not only because of the number of fossil remains that have been found, but that it is the oldest gorgonopsio to have been discovered.
They lived in the Permian age between 270 and 250 million years ago, before the age of the dinosaurs.
Scientists believe they were warm-blooded, like today’s mammals, but unlike most mammals they laid eggs.
Gorgonopsians were often predators which could measure 3.5 metres long and weigh 300 kilos, though the earlier ones were much smaller.
The remains recovered in Mallorca belong to a small-medium sized animal, approximately a metre long, and were found in Banyalbufar.
The fossil was excavated in three different phases and a large amount of material has been recovered.
The MCBN curator, Rafel Matamales, said: “The large number of skeletal remains is surprising,”
“We have found everything from skull fragments, vertebrae and ribs to a very well preserved femur.”
“When we started the excavation we could not imagine that we would find so many remains of an animal of this type in Mallorca,” he added.
Previous known remains of gorgonopsium have been found in extreme latitudes of Russia or South Africa.
Josep Fortuny from the Catalan Institute said: “It is most likely the oldest gorgonopsium on the planet.”
“The fossil we have found in Mallorca is at least 270 million years old and the other records of this group worldwide are mostly younger.”
