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Description

"Armed murder" is indeed the meaning of the name Hoplophoneus, one of many types of the nimravids, the false cats of the mid Cenozoic.

Much like how crocodiles were natures attempt at recreating the unrelated Triassic phytosaurs, the felines, one of Earth`s most effective and successful mammalian land carnivores alive today, are likewise very much copycats in terms of their carefully crafted predatory anatomy, a design that was initially conceived by the Eocene nimravids.

Both cats and nimravids are feliform carnivorans, but the nimravids are thought to be one of the most basal of the feliform groups, with hyenas, mongooses and civets being closer to the real cats than the former.

Nimravids thrived in North America between 39 to 24 million years ago, with numerous species from numerous different genera being known from various late Eocene and Oligocene fossil sights, outnumbering most other predators from that same faunal stage in America, like entelodonts, creodonts and the other terror birds, the bathornithids, in terms of diversity.

Troughout much of their reign, North America was a lush, tropical biome akin to Africa and south Asia and offered the nimravids a plentiful and diverse plethora of prey animals, like oreodonts, early, miniature horses and camels, protoceratids and various types of primitive rhinos.

Ranking among the biggest nimravids were several species of Hoplophoneus, such as H. sicarius and H. mentalis, which may have reached sizes comparable to jaguars, up to 150 kg, and had impressively large saber teeth, who in terms of lengh in comparison to body size, could easily have rivaled most species of saber-toothed cats, the machairodonts and barbourofelids.

Description

"Armed murder" is indeed the meaning of the name Hoplophoneus, one of many types of the nimravids, the false cats of the mid Cenozoic.

Much like how crocodiles were natures attempt at recreating the unrelated Triassic phytosaurs, the felines, one of Earth`s most effective and successful mammalian land carnivores alive today, are likewise very much copycats in terms of their carefully crafted predatory anatomy, a design that was initially conceived by the Eocene nimravids.

Both cats and nimravids are feliform carnivorans, but the nimravids are thought to be one of the most basal of the feliform groups, with hyenas, mongooses and civets being closer to the real cats than the former.

Nimravids thrived in North America between 39 to 24 million years ago, with numerous species from numerous different genera being known from various late Eocene and Oligocene fossil sights, outnumbering most other predators from that same faunal stage in America, like entelodonts, creodonts and the other terror birds, the bathornithids, in terms of diversity.

Troughout much of their reign, North America was a lush, tropical biome akin to Africa and south Asia and offered the nimravids a plentiful and diverse plethora of prey animals, like oreodonts, early, miniature horses and camels, protoceratids and various types of primitive rhinos.

Ranking among the biggest nimravids were several species of Hoplophoneus, such as H. sicarius and H. mentalis, which may have reached sizes comparable to jaguars, up to 150 kg, and had impressively large saber teeth, who in terms of lengh in comparison to body size, could easily have rivaled most species of saber-toothed cats, the machairodonts and barbourofelids.