The unusual creature's eyes may have moved to make room for its massive canines.
“To look for clear-cut adaptive explanations in evolutionary biology is fun but largely futile,” said Analia Forasiepe, a researcher at the Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología, y Ciencias Ambientales and CONICET, in the museum
release. “One thing is clear: Thylacosmilus was not a freak of nature, but in its time and place it managed, apparently quite admirably, to survive as an ambush predator.”“We may view it as an anomaly because it doesn’t fit within our preconceived categories of what a proper mammalian carnivore should look like, but evolution makes its own rules,” Forasiepe added.
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