'New' cat species from 10,000 years ago found in Madrid dig
Tuesday, November 28, 2017 @ 10:03 PM
A SPECIES of cat living wild in Madrid over 10,000 years ago has been discovered in an archaeological dig in Madrid.
The Leptofelis Vallesiensis, as the excavation team have baptised it, would have lived fairly close to humans at around the time cats as we know them today are thought to have 'domesticated themselves' to make sure they always had a source of food.
They largely resembled the mountain cat (pictured) which still lives wild in parts of Spain today.
The National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN), in conjunction with the High Council of Scientific Research (CSIC) and Madrid's Alcalá University (UAH) made the discovery at the Cerro de los Batallones archaeological site in Torrejón de Velasco, near the capital, where it was recently reported that fossils from the earliest and short-necked species of giraffe had been found.
According to the historians, the 10,000-year-old cat would have been slim and lithe, but weighing between seven and nine kilos – compared with a typical, normal-weight domestic cat's 4.5 to five kilos – meaning they are likely to have been longer and taller than the four-legged friends who occupy an estimated 30% of human homes in the western world.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com