Beijing, PRC (Weltexpress). A team from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, based in Beijing, discovered the fossilised remains of a miniature cat that lived near human settlements in ancient times in a cave in the eastern Chinese province of Anhui, as reported in China Daily.
Representatives from the Swedish Museum of Natural History and the Harbin Forestry University in northeast China were also involved in the investigation of the finds in the village of Hualongdong.
According to Chinese archaeologists, the animal was an extinct leopard cat species that was described as so tiny that it would easily fit in the palm of a hand. The newly discovered fossil species was named Prionailurus kurteni. The scientists suspect that the food leftovers left by humans attracted rats that were hunted by this small species.
The discovered animal fossils should help historians to better understand the environment, nutrition and threats that existed in this region ten or even a hundred thousand years ago.
The Hualongdong excavations have been ongoing since 2013 and have yielded the fossilised remains of some 20 ancient humans, over 400 stone artefacts and more than 80 fossilised vertebrates.
