, 2000; Therrien, 2005; Wroe, McHenry & Thomason, 2005; Christian

, 2000; Therrien, 2005; Wroe, McHenry & Thomason, 2005; Christiansen, 2006; Slater & Van Valkenburgh, 2008; Meloro Napabucasin solubility dmso & Slater, 2012). However, it is difficult to evaluate these hypotheses without a living analogue. The clouded leopards, Neofelis spp., seem to show skull features considered to be characteristic of the primitive sabretooth condition (Christiansen, 2006, 2008). Unfortunately, little is known of their ecology and hunting behaviour (Nowak, 1991; Sunquist & Sunquist, 2002; Grassman et al., 2005; Christiansen, 2006, 2008). Moreover, other morphometric analyses failed to find much similarity between

extant Neofelis nebulosa and sabretoothed carnivores (Slater & Van Valkenburgh, 2008). In another study (Goswami, Milne & Wroe,

2010), N. nebulosa clustered with the nimravids Dinictis and Hoplophoenus, but not the other sabretooths. Therefore, the status of N. nebulosa is controversial, but still it is one of the very few living analogues of the primitive see more sabretooth previously proposed. To speculate about the hunting behaviour of primitive sabretooth cats, Christiansen (2006) used N. nebulosa and considered available evidence of killing large prey (Rabinowitz, Andau & Chai, 1987; Grassman et al., 2005) and each other (Seager & Demorest, 1978) with a powerful nape bite and suggested the following: ‘It may be that its enlarged gape and hypertrophied MCE canines are an adaptation for nape killing of large prey, but this is, at present, speculation’. Christiansen (2011), based on a dynamic model,

speculated about mandibular adductor histochemistry and morphology in sabrecats. But all these ideas would remain speculations ‘… until a Pleistocene sabrecat is unearthed from the permafrost, as have been numerous proboscideans and other megaherbivores’ (Christiansen, 2011). Until a frozen Pleistocene sabrecat is found, a strategy to test ideas about killing behaviour, mandibular adductor histochemistry and morphology is to identify a living primitive sabretooth analogue that allows further study. The sabretooth ecomorphology originated not only in the order Carnivora, but also among predatory marsupials such as the borhyaenids (see, e.g. Blanco, Jones & Grinspan, 2011 and references therein). The living predatory marsupials are the didelphids and dasyurids; among them we found the southern short-tailed opossum Monodelphis dimidiata, a very small species. Monodelphis dimidiata is a grassland-dwelling opossum from Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. The species presents sexual dimorphism, adult male body mass is between 100 and 150 g and adult female body mass is between 30 and 70 g (González, 2001). The diet in the wild includes plants, insects, arachnids and small rodents.

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