( CNN) Twenty-three million years ago, a giant carnivore larger than any modern-day lion or polar bear stalked sub-Saharan Africa, according to the fossils of a previously undiscovered species that expend decades in a museum drawer.
“Opening a museum drawer, we watched a row of gigantic meat-eating teeth, clearly belonging to a species new to science, ” said Matthew Borths, study author and curator of the Division of Fossil Primates at Duke University, in a statement posted.