Clawed Creatures Found Roaming in Abandoned Hammer Forge
From today’s perspective, they look like a cross between a horse and a gorilla: clawed animals (Chalicotheriidae) had a massive body and a horse-like head; their arms were much longer than their legs and had claws. They belonged to the perissodactyl group and are therefore related to today’s rhinos, horses and tapirs. They finally died out about two million years ago.
Finds from the Hammerschmiede excavation site in the Allgäu show that they also lived in what is now southern Germany 11.5 million years ago. A team of researchers from Tübingen and South Africa has now examined this for the first time and published the results in the specialist journal PaIZ.
As Panagiotis Kampouridis, doctoral student at the University of Tübingen and first author of the study, reports, fossil teeth and finger bones from the genus Anisodon were recovered. These extraordinary herbivores lived in wooded areas and were considered ankle-walkers – like today’s great apes. They probably used their huge claws to grab leaves and branches from trees, scrape off bark or even tear up smaller trees.
In addition, a second group of clawed animals lived in the region 11.5 million years ago, as the finds of a kneecap and a skull fragment show: The schizotheriines’ arms were only slightly longer than their legs and they were much better runners in open terrain .
Because both groups had similar diets, they excluded each other from certain ecological niches and rarely lived in the same habitat. The hammersmith proves that both animals lived in the same region. However, they were recovered from different layers, which probably represent different habitats.
“Our results provide insight into the relationship between these two closely related groups,” says Kampouridis. “In addition, the findings support the hypothesis that these two groups could only live in the same ecosystem at the same time under certain ecological conditions.”
Excavations have been taking place in the Hammerschmiede fossil site since 2011 under the direction of Professor Madelaine Böhme from the Senckenberg Center for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment at the University of Tübingen. Over 150 different species of extinct vertebrates have already been recovered from river deposits.