Smilodon

The saber-toothed cat — an Ice Age ambush hunter of the Americas.

Smilodon is a genus of saber-toothed cat that prowled North and South America during the Pleistocene — the last Ice Age — and died out roughly 10,000 years ago. Often called the 'saber-toothed tiger,' it was not closely related to modern tigers; it belongs to an extinct cat subfamily, the Machairodontinae. Three species are generally recognized: S. gracilis, S. fatalis, and the massive S. populator.

Those canines

Smilodon's elongated upper canine teeth could reach around 20 cm (about 8 inches) in length and were likely used in a powerful, precise killing bite to the throat of large prey. Its body was heavily built and muscular — more powerful than a modern lion — suited to wrestling down big herbivores rather than long chases.

How we know

The genus was named by Danish naturalist Peter Wilhelm Lund in 1842 from Brazilian cave deposits. Smilodon is exceptionally well known thanks to the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, where thousands of individuals became trapped in natural asphalt — making S. fatalis one of the best-studied prehistoric mammals on Earth.

Where it lived

Smilodon ranged across the Americas, from North America (S. fatalis) to the plains of South America (S. populator, among the largest cats that ever lived). It hunted alongside other Ice Age giants and vanished during the extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene.

Sources

Compiled by PaleoDex from open scientific data. Like the app, every fact here is sourced — primarily the Paleobiology Database and Wikipedia/Wikimedia — and where a fact isn't sourced, we leave it out rather than guess.

· Wikipedia: Smilodon
· Paleobiology Database (PBDB)