Cerro de los Batallones

Cerro de los Batallones is a hill at Torrejón de Velasco, Madrid, Spain where a number of fossil sites from the Upper Miocene have been found. Nine sites have been discovered with predominately vertebrate fossils, invertebrates and plants being less represented. The first deposits were discovered accidentally in July 1991.

Nearly the entire proportion of fossils of Batallones-1 were of Carnivorans. The species of sabre-tooth cat known as Promegantereon ogygia and Machairodus aphanistus were found at B-1, as was Simocyon a type of red panda. In regards to the saber-tooth cats, Batallones-1 represents an ideal site for recording the percentage of specimens for which breakage of the upper canines occurred. Promegantereon, Machairodus and Paramachairodus are perfect examples of this at Batallones; fossils indicate a high number of canine breaks from where the teeth hit the bones of a struggling victim, indicating these early machairodonts would use their elongated teeth to subdue prey as modern big cats do.

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