Rank Genus | Phylum Chordata Order Carnivores | |
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Similar Prosansanosmilus, Carnivores, Barbourofelidae, Barbourofelis, Dinaelurus | ||
Sansanosmilus (pronounced - San-San-Oh-SMILE-Uss) is an extinct genus of carnivorous mammal of the family Barbourofelidae (false saber-tooth cats) endemic to Europe and Asia, which lived during the Miocene, 13.6—11.1 mya, existing for approximately 2.5 million years.
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Taxonomy
Sansanosmilus was named by Kretzoi (1929). It was assigned to Hoplophoneinae by Flynn and Galiano (1982); to Felidae by Carroll (1988); to Barbourofelinae by Bryant (1991); and to Barbourofelidae by Morlo et al. (2004) and Morlo (2006)
It had short legs, was very muscular and had a long tail. Sansanosmilus was 1.5 m long and probably weighed around 80 kg. In 1961, paleontologist L. Ginsburg concluded that Sansanosmilus was possessed of a plantigrade walking stance, after studying its foot bones and comparing it with those of Pseudaelurus from the same site. This is different from later barbourofelids, which are believed to have had semi-plantigrade or semi-digitigrade stances.
Species of Sansanosmilus
However, Robles et al. (2013) transferred S. jourdani (which they considered to be a senior synonym of S. vallesiensis) to the genus Albanosmilus.