What the Hell is Nimravus 

That would certainly be an interesting sound for cat like animals to make. Seems like a fun idea for reconstructions.

Or it could be a mix of cougar yowls, tiger roars, fossa screams and mongoose/hyena laughs?

I mean, it was something I specifically noticed, & I am very much a "in general complex features evolve once" paleontologist. While I did do research for this video, I did not carefully analyze every dataset, so that idea could still very well be wrong. I also just think it's something which needs to be tested better.

Nimravids did saber-teeth before the saber-toothed cats.

Yeah, they really are unique, and even with the long lower canines they are the closest we have today.

Lol. Thanks! We try to be on the line between way too technical, and still making a good explanation.

Thank you. Was wondering about that and others tbh but too late to be tumbling down wikipedia

The weasel thing is interesting, because people always talk about arthropods becoming crabs, but few people talk about mammals becoming ferrets. Future video idea maybe?

@@RaptorChatter I would argue the tasmanian devil falls into that camp. Marsupial wolverine? What the hell is a mongoose? Not a mon or a goose!

Well, the Feliformia are within carnivora, so it still may support that idea, unless I'm missing something in your comment. I'm not super familiar with that hypothesis, so I may be misunderstanding something.

@@RaptorChatter You seem to have misunderstood what I was saying. I was saying that BECAUSE nimravids are feliform carnivorans, they contradict the idea of carnivorans displacing other clades of land predators wholesale, since they coexisted with many of the groups that supposedly got displaced. There’s this idea called the “Velvet Claw phenomenon” where carnivorans supposedly outcompeted and displaced every other lineage of Cenozoic land predators they encountered by being supposedly “better evolved” in terms of things like intelligence, group behaviour or speed. These narratives usually have carnivorans taking over the world starting in the Early Miocene and going on from there. But nimravids are feliform carnivorans that dominated the northern hemisphere as apex predators for the entire Oligocene epoch, yet coexisted alongside many other lineages of predators that supposedly couldn’t withstand carnivoran competition and were displaced (hyaenodonts, entelodonts, flightless predatory birds in the form of bathornithids). Thus, the fact nimravids existed, and were actually dominant at the same time as those other groups of predators, refutes the notion that said groups of predators were unable to handle carnivoran competition, since it shows that carnivorans actually became a dominant force an entire epoch earlier than commonly claimed-and did so without displacing other groups of land predators. It’s also questionable whether carnivorans actually had any of the commonly claimed advantages over other groups of Cenozoic predators (intelligence estimates of fossil animals must rely entirely on features of brain anatomy so are unreliable, most carnivorans are not cooperative hunters, most carnivorans are not well-suited for running, etc).

@@bkjeong4302 ah, I see now. Interesting idea, but yeah seems less valid with the coexistence of nimravids and others. Thanks for clarifying.

This is not a good argument. You see the Hyaenodons wither in diversity in North America as the nimravids explode in diversity.

@@klikssiikubra314 Except the hyaenodonts that declined in diversity were all much smaller, basal forms that weren’t going to be in competition with most nimravids anyways, while the forms that actually competed with nimravids were the big predators (because nimravids mostly diversified into this niche as well), which did fine.

Thanks!

They also have the same BFQ as jaguars. They're also p4p the most physically strongest member of the cat family, rivaling tigers and jaguars.

I will fully admit I am not super familiar with these statistics. What is BFQ? I may have mentioned it in the video, but that was a while ago, and I don't recall everything

I feel like it's something to do with the biceps length, but can't recall for sure.

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Maybe. Some animals are just more prone to combat. Others are more used to posturing to compete. Lions are a great example of both, because they have the mane, plus they do fight fairly regularly. So maybe nimravids were more aggressive towards other predators.

This is giving me Oklahoma Dept. of WIldlife Conservation vibes.

SANUs are their whole own host of taxonomic problems. But I really should look at them in better detail eventually.

You're welcome!

Giving that it lived during the Eocene, it's impossible that Nimravus (and other Nimravids, fossas and other basal feliforms) lived in arctic or tundra climates and landscapes.

They still may broken off. But yes it is less likely. It may also just be failed attempts at predation similar to those of jaguars, which do bite through skulls. This is very key in the Nimravus-Hoplophoneus specimen, which while I don't mention it in the video, the Nimravus seems to have healed some from the puncture, meaning it survived for at least a bit.

That's all totally fair. For the purpose of these we generally have started trying to discuss why some of the more interesting features & how they may have been used. Getting into very specific taxonomy isn't for the audience I'm trying to reach, who in general, have more of a layman view of biology. It's something we've been debating changing, but unfortunately for the amount of time we can dedicate to producing content is currently limited, so the more specific details are one of the things that we have cut.

Thanks!

Not that I can think of. But I'm not a biomechanist, so there could be something for that.

Humans walk mostly on our heels, we can get by without toes. It's our feet the sets us apart from the other apes and is apparently an adaptation to more efficient walking, more similar to hoofed animals.

Actually during the time Gorgonopsian's lived, all the continents where a single landmass

@@markdebruyn1212 This is a true, but a pointless point, because even though Pangea was one large mass, it doesn't change where fossils are found today

@@Soviet1332 In know but at that time America was closer to Europe, instead of russia

​@@markdebruyn1212 That's incorrect, just becuase plates move, countries don't transport elsewhere. The first ever Gorgonopsid was found in Siberia. The second was found in modern Alabama. America north, central, south and west has always been extremely close to Russia. So much so, Alaska was once Russian. Countries don't suddenly fly 5000 miles across the world and join another continent. America has never EVER been neaar Europe. I am a scientist, this is basic knowlegde I learned I school

@@Soviet1332 Actually i found of Pangaea (with all countries on it and europe was actually close to west coast of canada, and russia dit touch alasaka, so the part with russia was my mistake

Thanks!

@@RaptorChatter your welcome

I'm not sure how much I'd be able to do with that since there's not normally soft tissue preserved, but I'd also have to look at the modern spread of purring and see if there's any mechanism differences in modern cats that can.

So it's a Nimravid, which has recently (last 10ish years) been synonymized with Hoplophoneus

I'll be sure to add it to our What the Hell list!