The fact that this sabre-toothed cat lived to adulthood with such a debilitating conditionВ suggested to Balisi and her colleagues that it had help from other cats to survive. Why might big cats with bad hips be social? The team's findings were published last month in Nature. Hunting would have been painful and difficult.' 'At some point, bone was rubbing on bone, and we see evidence of that in the skeleton. 'This condition would have degenerated over the animal's life, and so it would have started limping,' Balisi said. But in the case of hip dysplasia, there is an incomplete formation, or deformation of the hip socket. Normally the top of the femur fits into the hip socket to create the hip joint. Hip dysplasia occurs when the hip socket doesn't fully cover the ball portion of the thigh bone. Instead, symptoms that supported the diagnosis of hip dysplasia were found,' she told Quirks & Quarks host Bob McDonald. 'If this had been from an injury, there would have been fractures preserved in the bone.

'A CT scan of this specimen at Cedar Sinai Hospital here in Los Angeles found no evidence of fractures,' said Balisi, who is also aВ postdoctoral fellow at the La BreaВ Tar Pits and Museum. Paleontologist Mairin Balisi holds a sabre-toothed cat pelvis. The injuries were previouslyВ assumed to have been sustained from the aggressive hunting style required to bring down much larger prey than themselves, like bison.Д«ut an in-depth study of that one pelvic bone found something else, which overturned that previous assumption. The team of researchers, including paleontologistВ Mairin Balisi,В decided to investigate a puzzling pattern.ДЄ surprising number of fossils of Smilodon fatalis, the sabre-toothed catВ that lived in the Los Angeles area up until about ten thousand years ago, showed evidence of hip damage.

The La Brea Tar Pits and Museum, which is part of the Los Angeles Natural History Museum, is home to a collection of the remains of aboutВ more than 2,000 extinct sabre-toothed cats, as well as many other animals, including other extinct animals like ground slots to mammoths. Paleontologists have found a wealth of fossil remains inВ excavationВ of theВ pits. The cat's fossilized remains were found in theВ La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, an areaВ the size of several city blocks.В The pitsВ have preserved the remains of animals that were trapped in sticky tar over tens of thousands of years. The researchers identified the cat's pelvic bone showed evidence ofВ long-term hip dysplasia, a developmental birth defect that is common in modern times inВ dogs and cats, but also well-known in humans. Scientists have found thatВ the fossilized remains of an adult sabre-toothed cat show signs that it lived with a congenitalВ hip condition, suggesting that it livedВ in a social group with other cats who were able to help it hunt and feed.

The long dark condition