Habitat & Interactions

Figure HI1: Large prehistoric animals in a valley region.

The Cambrian Explosion was a time when enormous amounts of plant, animal, and fungal diversity occurred. The Cambrian time period is part of a larger era called the Paleozoic era. After the Paleozoic era came the Mesozoic era. Barbourofelis fricki appeared fairly recently during the Cenozoic Era, Mid-Pliocene Epic (Martin, 1998), and during the Early Hemphillian Stage (Tseng et al, 2010). There were other large animals at the same time. Other animals that were around at the same time included rhinos and elephant relatives.
Barbourofelis fricki were hypercarnivourous predators (Tseng,2010). Predators are less abundant than their prey and play an important role in the ecosystem.
Habitat
Barbourofelis fricki lived mostly in Nevada (MacDonald and MacDonald, 1976). Part of them also lived in South Dakota and the south part of California (Tseng et al, 2010). This species appeared fairly recently during the Cenozoic Era, Mid-Pliocene Epic (Martin, 1998), and during the Early Hemphillian Stage (Tseng et al, 2010). Fossil evidence indicated that most of mammal species came to the stage after the extinction of  dinosaurs (Gore, 2003), including Barbourofelis fricki. The time is about 60 million years ago. Barbourofelis fricki were hypercarnivourous predators.Its preys included rhinos and elephant relatives, mainly small rhinocerotoids (Janis et al,1998)


Stage: Early Hemphillian (MacDonald and MacDonald,1976)
Epic: Mid-Pliocene
Era: Cenozoicera

Figure HI2: A diagram of the time period Barbourofelis fricki was alive.

Figure HI3: Shows Barbourofelis fricki attacking a larger organism. They were able to do so because of their highly adapted teeth and strong bodies.

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