🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This study estimated body mass across the species of Smilodon using regression relationships between skeletal dimensions and body weight in living felids. The analysis confirmed that the South America…

Per Christiansen, John M. Harris · Journal of Morphology · 2005

In this classic functional study, Akersten proposed the canine shear-bite model for Smilodon, addressing how an animal could use such elongated, blade-like upper canines without snapping them. He argu…

William A. Akersten · Contributions in Science, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County · 1985

This study quantified variation in skull and lower-jaw shape across living and extinct cats to understand the patterns and constraints governing felid cranial evolution. Using morphometric analysis of…

Per Christiansen · PLoS ONE · 2008

This study recovered complete mitochondrial genomes from the dirk-toothed Smilodon and the scimitar-toothed Homotherium, allowing a genetic test of how these iconic sabertooths relate to one another a…

Johanna L. A. Paijmans, Ross Barnett, M. Thomas P. Gilbert, et al. · Current Biology · 2017

This authoritative review chapter synthesizes the evolutionary history and phylogeny of the cat family, integrating fossil evidence with molecular data to present a comprehensive picture of how cats d…

Lars Werdelin, Nobuyuki Yamaguchi, Warren E. Johnson, Stephen J. O'Brien · Biology and Conservation of Wild Felids (Oxford University Press) · 2010

This overview surveys the Barbourofelidae, a group of sabertooth-bearing carnivores, including the formidable Barbourofelis, that represent yet another independent acquisition of the sabertooth form d…

This overview surveys Metailurus, a medium-sized cat of the late Miocene and Pliocene that lends its name to the Metailurini, a tribe of machairodonts with only modestly developed sabre canines. Less…

This overview examines the Nimravidae, an extinct family of cat-like carnivores that independently evolved sabertooth forms long before the true machairodont cats. Though strikingly similar to felids…

This overview examines Proailurus, widely regarded as the earliest true cat, known principally from the late Oligocene and early Miocene of Europe, including the famous Quercy fissure fillings of Fran…

This overview surveys evidence that the family Felidae originated in Eurasia, likely in Asia, before dispersing repeatedly across the world. Combining the fossil record of early cats such as Proailuru…

This overview surveys the internal classification of the Machairodontinae, the true sabertooth cats within the family Felidae. Researchers commonly divide the subfamily into several tribes: the Smilod…

This overview examines the deep evolutionary divergence within Felidae between the Felinae, the conical-toothed cats that include all living species, and the Machairodontinae, the extinct sabertooths.…

This landmark study used molecular genetics to reconstruct the evolutionary history of the cat family, resolving the relationships among all living felids and the timing of their diversification. The…

Warren E. Johnson, Eduardo Eizirik, Jill Pecon-Slattery, William J. Murphy, Agostinho Antunes, Emma Teeling, Stephen J. O'Brien · Science · 2006