![]() ![]() These finds have permitted remarkably detailed reconstructions of how Smilodon lived. Since then, hundreds of thousands of Smilodonbones have been found at La Brea. Merriam, and his student Chester Stock, monographed the morphology of this great carnivore in 1932. The first Chairman of the University of California Department of Paleontology, Professor John C. Juvenile to adult-sized fossils arerepresented in the large Berkeley collections. ![]() The name "saber-toothed tiger" is misleading as these animals are not closely related to tigers. The "saber-toothed tiger," Smilodon, is the California State Fossil and the second most common fossil mammal found in the La Brea tar pits. Click on either picture to view an enlarged version. We present two sabertooths, both classified in the order Carnivora, from different geological periods. More likely, they delivered one crippling stab wound and then waited for the prey to die. ![]() Sabertooth carnivores may not have tried to grapple with prey. A more plausible hypothesis suggests that saber teeth were used to deliver a fatal ripping wound to the belly or throat of a prey animal. However, attacking a large herbivore this way could easily break the saber teeth and saber teeth that were demonstrably broken during an animal's lifetime are rare in fossil deposits. Some paleontologists have suggested that they were used to grab and hold onto prey. Why the enormous teeth? Certainly they were used in hunting, but opinions vary as to exactly how they were used. ![]() The saber-tooth morphology is an excellent example of convergent evolution as it appeared in several evolutionary lineages independently. Even saber-toothed marsupial"cats" or thylacosmilids inhabited South America from the upper Miocene to the late Pliocene. The Hyaenodontidae, a family of the extinct mammalian order Creodonta, alsoincluded saber-toothed members. Saber teeth evolved bothamong the true cats, or the family Felidae (these saber-toothed cats are sometimes classified in a separate subfamily of cats, the Machairodontinae) and within the Nimravidae (an extinct carnivore family that was related both to the true cats and to the civets and mongooses). Saber-toothed members of the Carnivora, (the mammalian order that contains cats, dogs, bears, weasels, and others) appeared independently at least twice. With their enormous, deadly-sharp canines, saber-toothed carnivores are well known to many people as frightening and ferocious predators of the Cenozoic.Surprisingly, there is more than one "saber-toothed cat." The sabertooth morphology has appeared several times during the history of the mammals. ![]()
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