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Paleontologists have actually revealed the fossilized lower ideal dog of a big proborhyaenid sparassodont in the Taubaté Basin of Brazil.
The best lower dog of a big proborhyaenid sparassodont from the Tremembé Formation, Brazil. Scale bars– 5 mm in (A-E)and 20 mm in (H). Image credit: Rangel et aldoi: 10.4072/ rbp.2025.2.0534.
The brand-new fossil go back to the Deseadan age of the Oligocene date, in between 29 and 21 million years back.
The specimen is appointed to a yet-to-be-named member of the Proborhyaenidae, an extinct household of South American metatherian mammals within the order Sparassodonta.
These animals inhabited the function of meat-eating predators on the continent throughout the Cenozoic period.
“Sparassodonta is an extinct clade of metatherians endemic to South America that provided the primary terrestrial mammalian predators on this continent throughout Cenozoic times,” stated Dr. Caio César Rangel, a paleontologist with the Universidade Federal de Uberlândia and the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, and associates from Brazil.
“Their advancement consisted of 2 significant diversity occasions, first of all in the Eocene and posteriorly in the Miocene.”
“The Oligocene is defined by lower temperature levels compared to the Late Eocene and Miocene.”
“This worldwide cooling occasion resulted in considerable ecological modifications, which in turn triggered a faunal turnover in South America, consisting of the termination and diversity of a number of metatherian clades.”
Life restoration of Thylacosmilus atroxa types of saber-toothed metatherian mammal that came from the sibling family tree of the Proborhyaenidae. Image credit: Roman Uchytel.
The paleontologists gathered the brand-new specimen, which is 5.73 cm(2.3 inches)in length, from the lower part of the Tremembé Formation in the eastern State of São Paulo, Brazil.
“The Taubaté Basin lies in the State of São Paulo in southeastern Brazil and extends from the towns of Cachoeira Paulista to Jacarei,” they stated.
“It is around 150 km (93 miles) in length and 10 to 20 km (6-12 miles) in width, in a graben in between the range of mountains of Serra do Mar and Serra da Mantiqueira.”
“The Tremembé Formation is the only Late Oligocene fossiliferous system in Brazil that protects mammal fossils, with a varied animals and autochthonous types,” they included.
“The animals from this area is represented by Metatheria, Chiroptera, Rodentia, Cingulata, Astrapotheria, Litopterna, Notoungulata, and Pyrotheria.”
The ancient predator most likely resided in the swamp/lacustrine environment and inhabited the function of peak predator.
“The procumbence observed in the dog connected with obvious wear in the crown, recommends a regular usage most likely associated to the capture or active processing of victim in an adult person,” the scientists stated.
The discovery extends the geographical circulation of the Proborhyaenidae and includes a 2nd record of a member of this sparassodont household in Brazil.
“This record increases the variety of big mammals in the Tremembé Formation,” the authors stated.
“Overall, this area is a substantial geological and paleontological resource that supplies important insights into the lasts of the Paleogene duration in intertropical South America.”
The discovery is explained in a paper released in August 2025 in the journal Revista Brasileira De Paleontologia
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C.C. Rangel et al2025. The ‘overload beast’ of the Tremembé Formation (Taubaté Basin, Brazil; Late Oligocene): a description of a meat-eating metatherian (Sparassodonta, Proborhyaenidae). Revista Brasileira De Paleontologia 28 (2 ): e20250534; doi: 10.4072/ rbp.2025.2.0534
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