M Is for Meow: A Cat Alphabet

M Is for Meow: A Cat Alphabet — page 1
a A A is for Ancestors and Anatomy All the cats that came before us Saber-toothed and Proailurus Throughout all time a cat’s a cat for millions of years they’ve proven the fact Scientists working with DNA have recently gained more insight into how cats devel oped from their prehistoric ancestors and migrated around the globe Early fossil records for cats are few making tracing the family tree for modern cats difficult Both cats and dogs are thought to have descended from an ancient precursor Miacis a weasel-like carnivore that lived 45 to 50 million years ago The earliest known cat Proailurus was not much bigger than a modern day house cat Proailurus lived in Europe 20-30 million years ago This tree-dwell ing predator weighed about 20 pounds had large eyes sharp teeth and claws and a long tail Larger cats appeared as mammals began to dominate the earth These cats distant cousins of our cats flourished in the Ice Age throughout most of the world They ambushed grazing mammals Mastodons and Mammoths for food Smilodon knife tooth called the saber-toothed cat because of its seven-inch fangs is the best known of these Scientists know a lot about Smilodon because of the thousands of fossils left in the La Brea Tar Pits in California These cats became extinct at the end of the Ice Age about 11,000 years ago