Research overview: the history of canine shear-bite and clamp models

This overview traces the long history of competing models for how sabertooths used their elongated canines. Early ideas ranged from stabbing thrusts to a clamp-type bite, but each faced the problem that the slender canines could shatter under the wrong loads. The canine shear-bite model, in which the cat anchored immobilized prey and drew its head downward to slice through soft tissue, emerged as the leading hypothesis and was progressively refined through functional anatomy, finite-element analysis, and comparisons across machairodont lineages. The survey reviews how interpretations shifted from the dramatic dagger-stab imagery of early writers to today's nuanced, mechanically grounded accounts. It discusses the evidence that ultimately favoured a controlled shearing bite to the throat or belly and how this consensus shapes broader reconstructions of sabertooth predation.