Trivia / Life After Dinosaurs

• Science Marches On:
  • Gastornis is now known to be an herbivore rather than a carnivore.
  • There is no real reason to think Smilodon outcompeted Thylacosmilus. The fossil record suggests that sparassodonts went into decline over the course of the Miocene epoch until Thylacosmilus atrox was the only one left by the end of the Miocene, and vanished during the subsequent Pliocene (3 mya), while Smilodon first evolved at the dawn of the Pleistocene (2.5 mya) and migrated into South America a while later (around 2-1.5 million years ago). The only carnivorans that reached South America in time to meet the last sparassodonts were procyonids (the raccoon family).