This 300,000-year-old cat fossil could fit in the palm of your hand

Scientists in China have found something remarkable: the world’s smallest known cat fossil, belonging to a brand-new species of extinct leopard cat. This ancient feline was so small it could fit right in the palm of a hand.

Archaeologists unearthed the tiny fossil at the Hualongdong site in eastern China’s Anhui Province, a cave already well known to scientists for its ancient human remains. Researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, dated the fossil to over 300,000 years old and named the new species Prionailurus kurteni, according to a study published in the BioOne Digital Library.

The ancient cat’s size was comparable to today’s rusty-spotted cat and black-footed cat, currently the smallest living feline species on Earth, and much smaller than the modern leopard cat. Finding the fossil at all was a stroke of luck, since cat bones rarely survive long enough to fossilise; the cave likely protected the remains from weather and decay.

Lead researcher Jiangzuo Qigao of the IVPP suggested the cat may have been drawn to the site by food scraps left by ancient humans, which would have attracted rats, and the rats in turn attracted the small cats. There is no evidence the humans ate the cat, however, as the fossil’s jawbone shows no butchery marks.

Image: Wikimedia Commons/by UrLunkwill