Saber-toothed elephant, tiger fossils excavated in SW China

Chinese archeologists said they have discovered fossils of ancient saber-toothed elephants and tigers at two separate sites in southwest China's Guizhou Province.

Workers dug out a pile of fossilized bone fragments including shanks, ribs, jawbones and tusks at a construction site in Zunyi City of Guizhou early this month. Archeologists believed the unearthed bones to be the remains of a stegodon, or a saber-toothed elephant.

Stegodon was a kind of large herbivorous amniote living in the same age as the dinosaur in the late Jurassic period about 130 million years ago.

Archaeologists have also found fossils of a skull of saber-toothed tiger in a cave at the Maolan national natural reserve. The skull measures 28 centimeters long, 21.3 centimeters wide and 13.7 centimeters tall, and weighs 2,500 grams, containing a dozen of well-preserved teeth.

Source: Xinhua