An international team of researchers has published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature Communications the discovery and description of a new animal fossil found in Banyalbufar.
It is a therapsid, a group of animals that evolved into today’s mammals. The find, located in the village where Richard Branson owns a luxury hotel, is the first of this group “to be discovered in the Mediterranean region and, moreover, at 270 million years old, is the oldest in the world”, according to the MUCBO Museu Balear de Ciències Naturals (Balearic Museum of Natural Sciences). One of its most impressive characteristics are the large ‘sabre teeth’, typical of some prehistoric carnivores.
"The study of the fossil of this Mallorcan ‘sabre-tooth’, which predates the first dinosaurs, has allowed us to determine that it was an animal superficially similar to a medium-sized dog, although it had bare skin and reproduced by laying eggs, like reptiles and birds today. Its large and disproportionate tusks show that it was ‘the top predator in the ecosystem of the area".
According to MUCBO, scientists believe that one of the potential prey of this superpredator ‘was the tramuntanasaurus, another fossil animal discovered and described by the same researchers in 2023, whose remains were found associated with those of the “sabretooth”, also in Banyalbufar’. In the case of the ‘sabretooth’, Rafel Matamales, curator of the MUCBO and first author of the article, explains that ‘although we have not located the complete skeleton, but parts of the head, the spine and an almost complete back leg, these fossilised bones have been more than enough to be able to affirm that the “sabretooth” of Banyalbufar is the oldest known mammalian ancestor on the planet’.
The site where the fossils of the tramuntanasaurus and the ‘sabretooth’ were found corresponds to an ancient pond where, during the driest seasons, animals came to drink. “270 million years ago, Mallorca was not an island, but was part of the supercontinent Pangea. It was located in the equatorial zone and its climate was arid and dry,” say Josep Fortuny and Àngel Galobart, researchers at the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont, who are also part of the team that described the fossil.
This international study has also involved researchers from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Princeton University and the Field Museum of Chicago (all three in the United States), the Natural History Museum of Stuttgart (Germany), the Institut Català de Paleontologia Miquel Crusafont and the Museu d’Isona-Conca Dellà, both in Catalonia. It has been financed thanks to funds from the Consell. The fossils of the ‘sabretooth’ of Mallorca, along with a life-size reconstruction of the animal in life, can be seen in a new temporary exhibition that opened at the MUCBO and which can be visited until April.