Miocene (Pt 21): Mongooses and More

A modern mongoose

When Africa, moving north, collided with Asia around 19 million years ago, a number of hoofed animals, and other large herbivores, headed south to colonise the continent. Naturally, where herbivores go, predators follow, so an influx of carnivorous animals occurred at around the same time.

Until this time, Africa had been an island continent, separated from the larger northern landmasses and lacked many of the kinds of carnivore we are familiar with today. It had, for example, no cats, dogs, or bears, or even such quintessentially "African" animals as hyenas. All of these, and others besides, belong to the group of mammals known as "carnivorans", which essentially includes all large land-dwelling mammalian carnivores today, apart from the Tasmanian devil. They had evolved in the north, and the new land bridge gave them their first chance to reach the more southerly continent.

Miocene (Pt 18): Return of the Cats

Barbourofelis

For much of the Miocene, bears were represented in North America by the single genus Ursavus. This was relatively primitive, and small by the standards of modern bears, although still easily identifiable as such. It seems to have left no local descendants, but, around 7 or 8 million years ago, it was joined - and eventually replaced - by new arrivals from Asia.

The best known of these were Indarctos and Agriotherium, bears that were widespread across the Northern Hemisphere of the time, and common enough in both Asia and Europe. Indarctos was the smaller of the two, roughly the size of a black bear, and with what was probably a similarly omnivorous diet. It was likely more closely related to pandas than to other modern bears, and died out as the Miocene ended.