AUSTIN, Texas — For nearly two million years, a large cat with sharp front teeth lived in modern day North America, Europe, Asia and Africa.
Known as the Homotherium, this creature inhabited Texas approximately 20,000 years ago, comparable in size to a jaguar.
Recently, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin's Jackson School of Geosciences found a hidden tooth inside a fossil that led to new information on the animal.
By analyzing the six centimeter-wide fangs, the team learned the Homotherium once traveled on land between present-day Texas and Florida, which is now covered primarily by the Gulf of Mexico.
"Had that saber tooth been all the way erupted and fully in its adult form, and not some awkward teenage in-between stage, it would have just snapped right off," John Moretti, a doctoral student and lead researcher, said.
The animal who left behind the fossil was reportedly not full grown when it died, allowing its teeth to be preserved before it was discovered on a beach's shores.
Thanks to this research, geologists now know the creature once roamed between Texas and Florida during the Late Pleistocene period. During this time, mammals like saber-toothed cats and mastodons started to go extinct.
This isn't the first time the Homotherium has been found in Texas. More than 60 years ago, a scientist came across a fossil of the cat on a Beaumont beach in the southeastern part of the state.
Kitten fossils were also located in the Friesenhahn Cave, which is where a series of geological discoveries have been made over the years.
Thousands of years later, the Homotherium's history is allowing for new discoveries in Texas and beyond.
