A Michael Broad Blog
Eighty-five million years ago, Australia, New Guinea, and New Zealand separated from the major land mass called Gondwanaland. About 200 million years ago Australia was attached to Antarctica. 85 million years ago was well before the beginnings of the evolution of the cat. It is believed that around 60 million years ago there were …
Researchers have decided that cats evolved from a fierce saber-toothed predator that occupied North America 42 million years ago. They also decided that this “new species” was among one of the first mammals to be an obligate carnivore. At this time, I don’t have the full report of the study. And therefore, I don’t …
This post is specifically about the evolution of the domestic cat since domestication. I do not address the evolution of the wildcat pre-domestication. It’s fairly well-known and currently accepted that the first domestic cats on the planet existed around 10,000 years ago. We don’t know exactly when. It may be earlier than that perhaps …
Yes, there is a common ancestor to the cat and dog. If you believe in evolution as set out by Charles Darwin in his work “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection…” you will believe that there is a common ancestor to all animals not just cats and dogs. And that …
Italian archaeologists have unearthed the bones of nine Neanderthals from a hyena den about 100 km south-east of Rome. They think that the hyena den might have been the home of Neanderthals before it was taken over by hyenas. It got me thinking about other predators at that time who fed upon Neanderthals and …
Instinctively because of their evolution domestic cats don’t drink much water which can impact their health and drinking habits. Domestic cats have kidneys which are two and a half times more efficient than ours at ridding the body of waste products. This is inherited from their wild cat ancestor. It is a reflection of …
The large canine tooth of one cat is shown piercing the top of the skull of the other, killing the rival.
‘The earliest cat-like carnivores, which were to evolve into the family Felidae appeared between 30 and 40 million years ago, in the Late Eocene and Early Oligocene. Two main branches developed: the Sabre-tooths and the True Cats.’ – Dr Desmond Morris in Cat World. Sabre-tooths These cats had huge curved canine teeth for killing …
