Meet Bastetodon, A 30 Million-Year-Old Apex Predator

FLORA LICHTMAN: Up next, archaeologists found a remarkably intact 30 million year old skull in the Egyptian desert. The skull belongs to a previously unknown hyaenodont, a big cat-like apex predator that prowled what used to be a jungle.

Here to tell us more is one of the study authors, Shorouq Al-Ashqar. She’s a PhD candidate at Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center, and she teaches at the American University in Cairo, and she joins us today from Cairo. Shorouk, welcome to Science Friday.

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Oh, thank you. It’s nice to be here with you.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, so your team found this fossil early in the pandemic.

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Yeah.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Set the scene for me.

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Yeah, in the spring of 2020, Dr. Saleem and the team decided to take a break from COVID and spend some of the quarantine in the desert, specifically in the Faiyum depression in the western desert of Egypt. There, one of my colleagues spotted teeth sticking out from the ground and shouted excitedly to the rest of the team. It seemed like we had made a big discovery.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Teeth sticking out of the ground. Did you all know right away you had something big?

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Not right away. In the beginning, we were impressed by the preservation. It’s perfectly preserved. And it was a big deal. But after preparing the fossil for studying and started to realize the nature of the fossil, yeah. At that time, we have really made a big discovery.

FLORA LICHTMAN: And what makes this fossil such a big deal?

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Yeah, it’s a big deal because it’s complete, and it has new traits. So we have a new genus to name.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow, new genus.

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Yeah. And we performed several phylogenetic analysis to get the life tree and to study the movement and migration of hyaenodont group throughout the continents. So it provides us with a very impactful and interesting information.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So it’s a hyaenodont. Should I be picturing a hyena? What does it look like?

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: A hyaenodon, it’s a group of extinct, meat-eating mammals that lived all over the world in North America, Europe, Afro Arabia, and Asia after the dinosaur extinction and before the diversification of the modern-day carnivora-like dogs, lions, and cats.

FLORA LICHTMAN: It’s like a precat.

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Yeah. I like this expression.

FLORA LICHTMAN: How big was it?

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: It weighed 27.

FLORA LICHTMAN: 27 kilograms?

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Yeah, kilograms, yeah.

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK, so I’m just googling, so like 60 pounds, about.

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: OK.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Yeah. Take my word for it.

[LAUGHTER]

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: So it’s in the same weight of leopard or modern hyena.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Like a modern-day leopard. And was it the top of the food chain? What was it eating? What was its life like?

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Well, that’s a very good question. It lived in a tropical forest, in tropical rainforest, and may have preyed on the ancestor of elephants and hippos, as well as our monkey-like ancestor, Aegyptopithecus.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Really, Aegyptopithecus?

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. All of these fossils were discovered at the same site.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Wow. It sounds like the ecosystem was completely different back then too. I mean, you’re excavating in a desert, but it was a jungle rainforest?

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Yeah. It’s amazing. If you one time go to Faiyum, you will see the logs of trees, the petrified forest. And you can imagine how old this desert was like a tropical forest. It’s like a fairy tale. And until now, we don’t know the exact reason for the extinction of hyaenodont. Maybe climate change has played a big role in their extinction. So it’s like an analog for what’s happening today.

We as Egyptians are fascinated by our ancient Egyptian history. So we need to connect our natural heritage to our ancient Egyptian history.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I think when Westerners think about ancient Egyptian heritage, they think about human civilizations. But I hear you broadening it beyond that.

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Yeah. Before our ancestors were here to put their foot on Earth.

FLORA LICHTMAN: There was this whole other world.

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: That’s completely different.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What name did you give this fossil?

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Bastetodon. Bastetodon We named it after the cat-headed goddess Bastet in our ancient Egyptian history. It’s like the symbol of the protection and the pleasure in ancient Egyptian.

FLORA LICHTMAN: So I know that cats are depicted often in ancient Egyptian art. Do you think there’s any chance that early human civilizations were encountering these bones of Bastetodon or other hyaenodonts that may have inspired any of these depictions?

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Oh, that’s really a deep question. We found a lot of stone tools near the site of the hyaenodont, and we also found a lot of artifacts for the first time. Additionally, there is the oldest paved road in the world. So yeah, maybe people saw these bones before, but they didn’t realize what they are.

FLORA LICHTMAN: They may not have known that they were a cat-like creature.

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: Yeah, precats, as you said.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Precats, yeah. I loved hearing about this. Thank you so much for joining us today.

SHOROUQ AL-ASHQAR: OK, thank you. It was nice being with you.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Shorouq Al-Ashqar is a PhD candidate at Mansoura University Vertebrate Paleontology Center and teaches at American University in Cairo.

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