Paul Barrett’s paper is out showing that the Cat Gap may be more taphonomic than evolutionary. His phylogenetic analysis of feliform carnivores shows that Barbourofelis and its relatives, previously thought to be an independent derivation of sabertoothed habits, are actually nested well within the Nimravidae. This finding indicates that the Early Miocene gap between the last occurrence of non-barbourofeline nimravids and the first occurrence of barbourofelines is not a time period when the Holarctic was without a cat ecomorph, but rather a period when those ecomorphs are not preserved. Biogeographic analysis suggests that the missing fossils may be European or, more likely, African. At least now we know where and when to look for them!

Megan Wyatt’s thesis using geometric morphometrics to distinguish the dentition of Chaetodipus and Perognathus came out in the Journal of Mammalogy, only a year after she defended the work as her Clark Honors College thesis! This paper demonstrated that these two heteromyid genera, previously regarded as osteologically cryptic, can be distinguished using GM techniques on upper or lower jaws. This is a great jumping-off point for research into the paleontological record of the Chaetodipus–Perognathus split, inferred from molecular evidence to date to the middle Miocene. Go read it for yourself! https://doi.org/10.1093/jmammal/gyab052