The story
Gorgonopsians were carnivorous therapsids with long, saw-edged canine teeth, the sabre-toothed predators of the Late Permian, about 265 to 252 million years ago. Fossils come from the Karoo Basin of South Africa and from Russia, where Inostrancevia, the largest, reached about 3 metres. Richard Owen named Gorgonops in 1876 after the Gorgons of Greek myth, and Harry Seeley named the group in 1895. They had a wide gape and legs held more upright than sprawled.
They hunted the big plant-eating dicynodonts, and their long canines suggest they stabbed or slashed prey and then cut away flesh. Gorgonopsians diversified as the Capitanian extinction removed the older large carnivores, and they filled the top predator role. They vanished with the Great Dying about 252 million years ago, leaving cynodonts and other survivors to rebuild land ecosystems. Their sabre-toothed form later evolved independently in sabre-toothed cats and other mammals.
Why it mattered
- Gorgonopsians show that sabre-toothed predators evolved among mammal relatives long before mammals themselves.
- They were the apex of the last pre-extinction land ecosystem, which the Great Dying then destroyed.
- Their Karoo fossils help record the stages of the extinction on land.
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