JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020. DISCOVER 89Q: What was your first impression of the
forgotten fossil?
Stevens: [I remember] opening the
museum drawer that held the specimen
and being awestruck imagining this
enormous meat-eating animal on the early
Miocene African landscape.
Borths: I was shocked when I first saw it.
Of course, collections staff at the museum
were aware of the specimen, but it was
too large to fit in the drawers with its close
relatives, so it had received relatively
little attention from researchers since its
discovery decades ago. I could see that
it was one of the most complete giant
hyaenodonts ever found in Africa.
Q: What was Simbakubwa like in life?
Borths: Its body resembled a muscular,
giant lion with bearlike, flat feet and a
long, wolflike snout. Its head would have
seemed a bit too large for its body. Its back
teeth are simple shearing blades. ... Some
modern carnivores, like bears, dogs and
wolverines, have back teeth that can shear
and crush so those animals can be a little
more omnivorous. Simbakubwa didn’t have
crushing portions on its back teeth. Just
blades.
Q: What would be the closest modern
animal to compare with Simbakubwa?
Borths: We know from the teeth
of Simbakubwa that it was a meat-eating
specialist, a true hypercarnivore like a lion
or hyena, but there are no hypercarnivores
as large as Simbakubwa today.Q: Impressive size aside, what’s
the most significant thing about
Simbakubwa?
Borths: Simbakubwa lived at the
beginning of a time of intense
environmental upheaval in Africa. It’s the
oldest of these giant African carnivores,
and its fossils show us how meat-eaters
were adapting to the changing world. After
millions of years as an island continent,
Africa connected to Eurasia through theArabian Peninsula. This new superhighway
let animals from the north — like hyenas
and rhinos — hike into Africa, and animals
from Africa — like elephant relatives and
the descendants of Simbakubwa — hike
into Eurasia. On top of this ecological
mixing, the connection between the
continents rearranged ocean currents,
and changed rainfall patterns and habitats
across Africa. Simbakubwa is part of this
ecological experiment that took place
millions of years ago
and set the modern
African ecosystem
in motion.Q: What does
Simbakubwa’s road
to recognition tell us
about the untapped
value of fossils sitting
unstudied in museum
back rooms?
Stevens: Collections
like the National
Museums of Kenya
have long been
instrumental in
recognizing and
identifying new species
to science. None of
this would be possible
without the tireless efforts of museum
staff to preserve and protect specimen
collections.
Increased public interest in paleonto-
logical finds is driven by a strong desire
to understand changes on our planet over
time. This has only intensified in recent
years with the recognition that we are
presently witnessing a mass extinction
event with tremendous impact upon the
future of our own species. Museums allow
us to peer into the past to explore how
organisms respond to changing climates
and habitats, a data set we need to
understand, now more than ever.Q&A
Simbakubwa kutokaafrika
22 million years agoNancy Stevens