This 12 Million Year-Old Dog May Not Have Been Man’s Best Friend

The discovery of a 12 million year-old dog fossil has placed yet another species on the growing list of discoveries. However, this dog that lived in a time when the massive megalodon shark roamed in the oceans would not have been man’s best friend.

The new canine species has been named Cynarctus wangi, named after Xiaoming Wang a curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and a renowned expert on mammalian carnivores.

This coyote-sized dog was a member of the extinct subfamily Borophaginae, commonly known as bone-crushing dogs because of their powerful jaws and broad teeth. Unlike modern dogs it would have lived like a “mini-bear” with a diet of plants, insects, and meat, and is believed to have had a formidable bite.

The study’s lead author, Steven E. Jasinski, a student in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences, said in a statement:

“Based on its teeth, probably only about a third of its diet would have been meat.

“It would have supplemented that by eating plants or insects, living more like a mini-bear than like a dog.”

To read more go to Vision Times