Boo! On any other day but Halloween this would just be another old-timey scientific drawing (Figure 9, in Cope, 1880). Why bother with it when we can look it up online -- -- go to a museum, or, if we have a spare $75,000 to $161,000 or so, set up a real scare for trick-or-treaters with a "magnificent combination of fossilization and very talented preparation skills" (

"Here I come to save the day!" German Shepherds don't need capes. Not that there's anything wrong with that, beagles. "Ahem. Hold my beer." I didn't find Duncan with an online search, but IMDb's list of silent-film dog stars has quite a few German Shepherds on it Here are some of them at work. The only ones I can name (because of…

It's crouching behind you, right now. Well, perhaps not unless you have time-traveled to late Eocene or early Oligocene western North America. If you have, you are out of luck. Dinictis has longer, more gracile legs than some other nimravids and it is capable of short-term bursts of speed. (Antón, 2013) Don't take comfort in your track shoes and those H.

Some call them the most "humanized" dog breed, though as with cats, it isn't always clear who is domesticating whom. Maybe the wolves that became poodles had a secret desire to swim and retrieve things, to perform before admiring crowds in a circus, and to serve in the military. Maybe poodles have us right where they want us!

Pop quiz: These four Halloween skulls (part of Figure 1.10 in Sabertooth, CC BY-NC-ND-SA) are from: Two nimravids A Smilodon A modern big cat Can you tell them apart? Yes, that's Smilodon down there in the lower left, per Antón's image caption, with today's featured nimravid -- Hoplophoneus -- above it. This pictured species, Hoplophoneus mentalis, was about the size of a modern leopard but it was much more muscular than a leopard, especially in the forelegs.

Why not a glamour shot for a dog that too often goes unnoticed, though not by American Kennel Club members as well as many, many other dachshund fans worldwide. Of course, you might get arrested for animal cruelty in some places for trying to invent such a breed today. That long back and those short legs do lead to health issues…

Meet the Staple-Puller cat! It's a cat, right? It's got saberteeth. Actually Eusmilus bidentatus up there is a nimravid. What's a nimravid? Nimravids were the very first cat-like group of sabertoothed mammals to evolve. But they were not the first known group of sabertoothed carnivorous mammals. That honor goes to an oxyaenid group that is much older than nimravids. An oxyaenid skull is shown at the top of this graphic (the two skulls are not to scale):

This is a social-media post worth sharing here: 🇧🇷 In Brazil, a jaguar was rescued after spending several hours in a river The injured animal was clinging with its last strength to a mat attached to a boat. Several rescue teams were involved to safely pull the predator out of the Rio Negro. After the rescue, the big cat was… …

This is Cutie Month (except for the lead-in to Halloween, when safety is a concern). And beagles are SO cute that the AKC has many pages about them. But first, the show ring -- -- and some field trials, complete with shaky cam and that beautiful beagle bugling: 🐺🐺🐺 Wolf...must remember this is a domesticated wolf... 🐺🐺🐺 More information:

This looks like an ideal pet for someone who can't decide whether they want a cat or a dog and who also might be looking for deterrence because they live in a rough neighborhood. That's actually a beautiful reconstruction portrait by Mauricio Antón, of course (Figure 3.26 in Sabertooth, CC BY-ND-NC-SA 4.0), but not of a cat. Meet Barbourofelis morrisi, from Late Miocene Nebraska!

EDITORIAL. Le Monde.fr - 1er site d’information sur l’actualité. Retrouvez ici une info de la thématique About us du 05 février 2025 sur le sujet To our readers: On Le Monde's correspondent being bann...

Some dogs just dominate a scene. True story: A while back, I was visiting my stepmother and took her little beagle for a walk one workday morning (I was on a vacation). She lived in a development that was new and not totally filled in, so there was a nice rural feel to it. It was a sunny day, and Sam and I were just strolling along.

Ah...September! I could hold on to this moment forever. AKC breed page According to Wikipedia, bulldog breeding in Norway and the Netherlands is illegal because of concerns over the dogs' quality of life. PetMD page Featured image: Irene Miller/Shutterstock

What is that thing? A plush toy? It's got saberteeth -- is it a cat? It's a very primitive cat, isn't it? Wait, there are some major anatomical differences; maybe it's not a cat? But there are cat-like features, too -- does it belong to the cat family's cousins sister-group? No, it's a nimravid, right? 🎊🎈🐾🐾🐾🎈🎉 There, in a layperson nutshell, is the summary of Paleontology's centuries-long and ongoing debate about this prehistoric animal and its relatives --including all the question marks (but not the plush-toy hypothesis; also, nimravids are coming, a couple of posts from now, so they and any connections they might have to this group will keep).

Party in the White Room! Not. That's actually a graph. Spaghetti charts in 3D are even scarier than reconstructed sabercats. Why share that graph? Because very few fossils from the Early to Middle Miocene times that we're headed for in this post are complete enough to reliably reconstruct their cats -- some of the very first cats ever. (Antón, 2003)