A palaeontologist went rummaging around in some drawers in a Kenyan museum and found the biggest African meat-eating mammal of its day: Simbakubwa kutokaafrika.
Simbakubwa is Swahili for 'big lion', but it's not closely related to any animals living in Africa today.The fossils were found decades before by a group of researchers on the hunt for ancient ape remains at a western Kenyan dig site called Meswa Bridge.
In their research into the Simbakubwa, Dr Borths and Dr Stevens discovered that plenty of other researchers had also opened the drawer before them. This highlights not only how niche a field of expertise can be in palaeontology, but the importance of museums. In Australia, we name around 2,500 new species each year, according to Museums Victoria senior curator Kevin Rowe."That's around 192,000 species, but we estimate there's another 420,000 awaiting description."But at the current rate, it will take around 400 years to classify all of Australia's species, by which time many will be extinct.
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