Dinictis is a genus of the Nimravidae, an extinct family of Feliformia , also known as "false saber-toothed cats". Assigned to the subfamily Nimravinae, Dinictis was endemic to North America from the Late Eocene to Early Oligocene epochs (35.7—29.5 million years ago), existing for about .
Taxonomy
Dinictis was named by American paleontologist
Joseph Leidy in 1854. Its type is
Dinictis felina. It was assigned to the Nimravidae by Cope (1880);
and to the Nimravinae by Flynn and Galiano (1982), Bryant (1991), and Martin (1998).
[J. J. Flynn and H. Galiano. 1982. Phylogeny of early Tertiary Carnivora, with a description of a new species of Protictis from the middle Eocene of northwestern Wyoming. American Museum Novitates][H. N. Bryant. 1991. Phylogenetic relationships and systematics of the Nimravidae (Carnivora). Journal of Mammalogy.]
In a 2016 study, the genus was found to contain only the species Dinictis felina.
Description
Dinictis had a sleek body long, short legs high with only incompletely retractable claws, powerful jaws, and a long tail.
Dinictis walked
plantigrade (flat-footed), unlike modern
Felidae.
A 2012 study estimated that
Dinictis could've weighed around .
The shape of its skull is reminiscent of a felid skull rather than of the extremely short skull of the
Machairodontinae. Compared with those of the more recent machairodonts, its upper canines were relatively small, but they nevertheless distinctly protruded from its mouth. Below the tips of the canines, its lower jaw spread out in the form of a lobe.
Ecology
Dinictis lived in
North America with fossils found in
Saskatchewan,
Canada and
Colorado,
Montana,
Nebraska,
South Dakota,
North Dakota,
Wyoming, and
Oregon in the
United States.
Fossil evidence suggests
Hyenaodon horridus may have occasionally predated on
Dinictis.[John W. Hoganson and Jeff Person (2011). "Tooth puncture marks on a 30 million year old ]Dinictis
skull.", Geo News, p. 12-17
Benes, Josef. Prehistoric Animals and Plants. Pg. 204. Prague: Artua, 1979.
