Sabre-toothed cats and mastodons

If you could look back into the past and see the fauna in the Madrid region you would probably hardly be able to recognise it as countryside in the Iberian Peninsula. You would be more likely to think you were seeing an African or Asian country. Giraffes, hyenas, rhinoceroses, giant tortoises, the ancestors of modern elephants and even sabre-toothed cats lived in this region, as shown by the fossil remains found in the palaeontological sites in Cerro de los Batallones. Now, from 19 June to 1 March, you have the chance to see some of these finds with your own eyes in the Sabre-toothed cats and mastodons: the megafauna of the Miocene exhibition at CosmoCaixa.

The exhibition brings some 160 fossils found over a twenty-five-year period to CosmoCaixa, after these sites were discovered to the south of the city of Madrid during exploratory drilling for mining work. The surprising collection of extinct animals allows visitors to go on a journey through time and imagine what a part of nature was like around nine million years ago in the middle of the Miocene geological era. Although all kinds of animal species have been found, Cerro de los Batallones is one of the most important in the world in terms of remains of the carnivores and predators of the time. The discoveries have brought about advances in palaeontology, biology and other scientific disciplines.

Just a small part of the more than 25,000 remains found in these sites are on display at CosmoCaixa. It is not a small number, but many more fossils are expected to be found in the coming years. In fact, the history of the sites is as fascinating as the species on show. Due to certain geological processes, cavities formed in what is now the Cerro hill, which animals could enter but not get out of. The trapped animals attracted predators that could not escape either. So, millions of years later, the deadly trap has today become a valuable testimony to the natural history of the past.

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