The Rise and Fall of a Saber-Toothed Predator Before 'the Great Dying'.
Fossils of the saber-toothed Inostrancevia, a tiger-size mammalian ancestor, have been discovered in South Africa, revealing how unstable things were for animals during the Permian mass extinction event, also known as "the Great Dying." The fossils surprised researchers because Inostrancevia was thought to have only lived in the Northern Hemisphere. The discovery sheds light on how fundamental roles within ecosystems shifted due to disappearing species during the mass extinction. Studying what took place during Earth’s greatest loss of biodiversity millions of years ago can act as a mirror for what is happening globally now due to the climate crisis.