Research overview: jaw gape and the wide-mouth problem in sabertooths

This overview addresses how sabertooths like Smilodon achieved the enormous gape needed to clear their elongated canines and apply them to prey. Estimates suggest the jaws could open to roughly twice the angle of a modern lion, demanding modifications to the jaw joint and adductor muscles. Such a wide gape, however, places the muscles at a mechanical disadvantage, reducing bite force, which the survey links to the broader weak-bite interpretation of sabertooth killing. It reviews how researchers reconstruct maximum gape from skull geometry, how muscle architecture trades off between gape and force, and how these constraints shaped the distinctive killing styles of dirk-toothed and scimitar-toothed cats compared with conical-toothed felids.