About 250 million years ago, widespread volcanic eruptions changed the earth’s atmosphere and thus its climate, setting off “The Great Dying,” otherwise known as the Permian extinction. Some nine out of 10 species disappeared over the course of about a million years, during which herbivores and predators alike jockeyed for resources, including the formidable inostrancevia.
A saber-toothed meat-eater that likely had tough skin like a rhino and ran on all fours, the inostrancevia was the largest gorgonopsian, a group of proto-mammals that served as top predators in the years before the dinosaurs. Scientists thought inostrancevia had only lived in modern-day Russia, but the discovery of new fossils in South Africa means it must have migrated 7,000 miles across the supercontinent Pangaea to reach a new home.
