The goal of the study was to examine the possibility that dietary factors can explain the cougar's survival, according to Larisa R.G. DeSantis, assistant professor of earth and environmental sciences at Vanderbilt University, who co-authored the study with Ryan Haupt at the University of Wyoming.
For their investigation, DeSantis and Haupt employed a new technique called "dental microwear texture analysis" (DMTA). DMTA uses a confocal microscope to produce a three-dimensional image of the surface of a tooth. The image is then analyzed for microscopic wear patterns. The analysis of the teeth of modern carnivores, including hyenas, cheetahs and lions has established that the meals an animal consumes during the last few weeks of its life leave telltale marks. Eating red meat, for example, produces small parallel scratches while chomping on bones adds larger, deeper pits. The researchers analyzed the teeth of 50 fossil and modern cougars, and compared them with the teeth of saber-tooth cats and American lions excavated from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles and the teeth of modern African carnivores including cheetahs, lions and hyenas.
Among the La Brea cougars the researchers found significantly greater variation between individuals than they did in the other large cats, including saber-tooths. Some of the cougars show wear patterns similar to those of the finicky eaters but on others they found wear patterns closer to those of modern hyenas, which consume almost the entire body of their prey, bones included.
Photo Credit: ENN.com