A research conducted on a chunk of rock containing massive teeth has brought some interesting findings to light. Kept in a museum in Nairobi, Kenya, the teeth evoked interest in 2010 because of their huge size.
According to the research by Nancy Stevens, an integrative biologist from Ohio University, which was published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, along with co-writer Matthew Borths, in April 2019, the fossils are said to belong to one of the largest predators ever to walk the face of Earth, a beast called Simbakubwa kutokaafrika. It is believed to have lived in Africa 22 million years ago. The fossils were found in Western Kenya around 1980 and stored at the National Museums of Kenya (a state corporation that manages museums, sites, and monuments in Kenya).
Simbakubwa (in Swahili, meaning ‘big lion’ though it was not a cat) was so huge that its skull was that of the size of a rhino’s skull. Its eight-inch (20 cm) canine teeth were as large as bananas. It weighed about a tonne and was 8 feet long (21/2 metres) from snout to rump. Simbakubwa was clearly bigger than any terrestrial carnivorous mammal alive today, even larger than a polar bear. The researchers say that it would have looked like a gigantic hyena or long-tailed wolf with a head that was too big for its body, resembling fictional monstrous wolves. The animal had flexed feet, meaning it was not meant to run and pursue its prey across open fields. Rather, it was an ambush hunter like tigers.
Simbakubwa was a member of a group called hyaenodonts that appeared 62 million years ago and went extinct 9 million years ago. Hyaenodonts appeared 4 million years after the extinction of the dinosaurs.