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Oldest big cat fossil found in Tibet
Source: BBC
13 November 2013 Last updated at 00:19 GMT
Oldest big cat fossil found in Tibet
By James Morgan
Science reporter, BBC News
The oldest big cat fossils ever found - from a previously unknown species "similar to a snow leopard" - have been unearthed in the Himalayas.
The skull fragments of the newly-named Panthera blytheae have been dated between 4.1 and 5.95 million years old.
Their discovery in Tibet supports the theory that big cats evolved in central Asia - not Africa - and spread outward.
The findings by US and Chinese palaeontologists are published in the Royal Society journal Proceedings B.
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Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24913291