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cheetah might have been the bloodiest grampus at one of the oldest known sites for humans , leaving behind more carcasses than any other predatory animal there , scientist encounter .
That evidence comes from the discovery of the remains of what is now billed as the largestcheetahknown , and is now extinct .
The extinct cheetah,Acinonyx pardinensiswould have weighed double what its modern cousin weighs (shown here in a reconstruction).
The only remaining specie of cheetah ( Acinonyx jubatus ) represents the firm creatures on land active , long , sleek cats capable to escape up to 70 mph ( 113 kph ) . However , fossils suggest other species of cheetah , including burlier varieties , once stalked the satellite .
scientist find the fossils at a 1.8 - million - year - old web site at Dmanisi in the Republic of Georgia , one of the oldest hump land site for ancient human species out of Africa . researcher had divulge fossils of a dirk - toothed cat ( Megantereon cultridens ) and a similar scimitar cat ( Homotherium crenatidens ) in the field before .
Based on its sleeve and mitt bones , the stoutly build cheetah ( Acinonyx pardinensis ) weighed about 220 pounds ( 110 kilograms ) , or about double the weight unit of its New cousin . ( Theoldest cheetah fossilknown was a skull ofAcinonyx kurtenifound inChina ; the fauna live between 2.2 million and 2.5 million long time ago . )
The arena was once a forested valley floor whose edges blurred into savanna and grasslands , the variety of open priming coat demand for cheetahs to run down prey , research worker say . In this area , the extinct predator likely raven on antelope- to horse - size biz , probably hunt as a sprinter and suffocating victims by clenching their jaws around the prey ' pharynx . [ Top 10 Deadliest beast ]
Given these findings , the researchers said this nonextant cheetah likely thrived as a grampus , with each cat knock down an estimated 16,500 lbs . ( 7,500 kilogram ) of prey a year , more than any other piranha within its community .
" I was really astonished by how much meat it could wreak down , " said research worker Ralf - Dietrich Kahlke , a paleontologist at the Senckenberg Research Institute in Weimar , Germany .
This bounty of center would have helped render others great deal of leftover , including perhaps humans , who could have either drive the cats aside from fresh kills or salvage the remains after the Acinonyx jubatus finished din .
" We do n’t have any proof of such interactions yet , but we ca n’t omit them either , " Kahlke said .
As to whether cheetahs might havehunted the ancient humansthat exist at Dmanisi , " I do n’t cerebrate they really belong to the spectrum of prey of these cheetahs , but you never know if there were confrontations over kill , " Kahlke told LiveScience . All in all , these findings help shed illumination " on the context of the landscape painting our ancient relatives interacted with . "
Kahlke and colleagues Helmut Hemmera and Abesalom Vekua detail their findings on-line July 27 in the diary Quaternary Science Reviews .
