Discovered in a museum drawer: Simbakubwa kutokaafrika

By Paul Patton

Posted October 5, 2022

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D: Yaël, is it possible that there are big prehistoric animals that paleontologists have never discovered?

Y: Of course, it is, Don. The distant past is poorly known, and paleontologists find fossil evidence for new large animals all the time. In 2019 two American researchers reported discovering the fossil remains of a carnivorous mammal larger than a modern lion, and even larger than a prehistoric saber-toothed tiger. It lived twenty two million years ago in what’s now Africa.

D: Really? Where did they find it?

Y: They found it in a museum drawer at the Nairobi National Museum in Kenya.

D: A museum drawer?!

Y: It’s not as strange as you might think. Decades ago, a team of paleontologists dug up fossils of its jaw, portions of its skull, and some other parts of its skeleton. But the team was looking for fossils of prehistoric apes, so they just cataloged it, stored it, and forgot it.

D: So the modern researchers must have found something interesting about the fossils that the earlier team didn’t.

Y: They did. They found that the fossil creature was a mammal, but not closely related to any modern group of mammals. It was a member of an extinct group called the hyaenodonts. For forty million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs, they were the dominant group of mammalian predators in Africa. They all died out when their environment changed. The scientists named the creature Simbakuba kutokaafrika. Since there were apes in Africa back then, it’s possible that this gigantic predator, with canine teeth as big as bananas, might have dined on our distant ancestors.

An artist's illustration of Simbakubwa kutokaafrika, a large predator with stripes like a tiger but shorter legs

The Simbakubwa kutokaafrika belonged to an extinct group of mammals known as hyaenodonts. (Mauricio Anton / Wikimedia Commons)

Its very possible that there are big prehistoric animals that paleontologists have never discovered.

The distant past is poorly known, and paleontologists find fossil evidence for new large animals all the time. In 2019 two American researchers reported discovering the fossil remains of a carnivorous mammal larger than a modern lion, and even larger than a prehistoric saber-toothed tiger. It lived twenty two million years ago in what’s now Africa.

However, the surprising part of this discovery was that they found it in a museum drawer at the Nairobi National Museum in Kenya.

It’s not as strange as you might think. Decades ago, a team of paleontologists dug up fossils of its jaw, portions of its skull, and some other parts of its skeleton. But the team was looking for fossils of prehistoric apes, so they just cataloged it, stored it, and forgot it.

The modern researchers found that the fossil creature was a mammal, but not closely related to any modern group of mammals. It was a member of an extinct group called the hyaenodonts. For forty million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs, they were the dominant group of mammalian predators in Africa. They all died out when their environment changed.

The scientists named the creature Simbakubwa kutokaafrika. Since there were apes in Africa back then, it’s possible that this gigantic predator, with canine teeth as big as bananas, might have dined on our distant ancestors.

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