🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This study used three-dimensional analysis of skull and jaw shape to test whether scimitar-toothed and dirk-toothed sabercats differed in how they killed prey. By quantifying cranial geometry across m…

Borja Figueirido, Stephan Lautenschlager, Alejandro Perez-Ramos, Blaire Van Valkenburgh · Current Biology · 2018

This study recovered ancient DNA from extinct North American cats, including the scimitar-toothed Homotherium and the cheetah-like Miracinonyx, to test their relationships against living felids. The g…

Ross Barnett, Ian Barnes, Matthew J. Phillips, Larry D. Martin, C. Richard Harington, Jennifer A. Leonard, Alan Cooper · Current Biology · 2005

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 overview examines Friesenhahn Cave in Texas, a remarkable site that has shaped interpretations of Homotherium hunting behaviour. The cave yielded numerous remains of the scimitar cat alongside an…

This overview surveys evidence that the scimitar-toothed cat Homotherium reached South America, expanding its already vast range across the Americas. Fossil discoveries, including material reported fr…

This overview surveys Homotherium, the scimitar-toothed sabercat whose fossils span North America, Eurasia, and Africa, making it one of the most widely distributed of all machairodonts. Distinguished…

This overview surveys the disappearance of numerous large cats, including Smilodon, Homotherium, the American lion, the cave lion, and Miracinonyx, as part of the broader late Quaternary megafaunal ex…

This overview surveys how the Great American Biotic Interchange, triggered by the rise of the Panamanian land bridge, allowed cats to spread between North and South America. Following this connection,…

This overview surveys the long-running debate over whether climate change, human activity, or a combination of both drove sabertooths and other big cats to extinction at the end of the Pleistocene. Pr…

This overview examines the distinctive postcranial skeleton of Homotherium, whose elongated forelimbs, shorter hindlimbs, and digitigrade stance give it a sloping, hyena-like build very different from…

This overview surveys efforts to sequence nuclear and mitochondrial genomes from Homotherium and what they reveal about the scimitar cat's place among felids. Ancient DNA recovered from Pleistocene sp…

This overview examines the distinctive front teeth of Homotherium and what they reveal about its killing technique. Scimitar-toothed cats possess a strongly arched, procumbent incisor arcade set forwa…

This overview surveys how isotopic and contextual evidence has been used to test the long-standing idea that the scimitar-toothed cat Homotherium specialized in hunting young proboscideans. At sites s…

This overview reviews evidence that the scimitar-toothed cat Homotherium latidens persisted in Europe far later than once believed. A well-known mandible dredged from the floor of the North Sea, dated…

This overview reviews the quantitative methods palaeontologists use to estimate the body mass of extinct cats such as Smilodon, Homotherium, and Panthera atrox. Because soft tissue is not preserved, r…

This overview examines the idea that dietary and predatory specialization made many extinct big cats especially vulnerable to extinction. Hypercarnivorous predators such as sabertooths, with anatomy f…

This overview examines how radiocarbon dating is applied to the bones of late Pleistocene cats to reconstruct their chronologies and last appearances. Directly dating individual fossils of Smilodon, c…

This overview explains the long-recognized morphological divide among sabertooth cats between scimitar-toothed forms, such as Homotherium, and dirk-toothed forms, such as Smilodon and Megantereon. Sci…

This overview surveys studies of the fine structure of sabertooth canines, focusing on the serrations, or denticles, along their cutting edges and the internal histology of the teeth. Dirk-toothed cat…

This overview examines the vertebral column and trunk anatomy of machairodont cats and how they contributed to predation. The neck vertebrae of sabertooths are often elongated and bear large attachmen…

This overview examines the fundamental mechanical compromise that shaped sabertooth skulls: achieving a gape wide enough to clear elongated canines came at the cost of bite force. Opening the jaws to…

This overview surveys efforts to determine when and where the scimitar-toothed cat Homotherium finally disappeared on each continent. In the Americas the genus persisted into the late Pleistocene, whi…

This overview takes a deep-time perspective on the rise and fall of sabertooth cats, whose machairodont lineage flourished for more than ten million years before vanishing in the late Pleistocene. Aft…

This overview reviews arguments that Homotherium may have been a social, cooperatively hunting cat. Evidence cited includes accumulations of juvenile mammoth remains at sites like Friesenhahn Cave, su…

This overview examines the hypothesis that sabertooths killed primarily by directing a precise bite to the throat of immobilized prey. By driving the canines into the soft ventral neck, the cat could…

This richly illustrated scholarly book synthesizes decades of research on sabertooth cats and their relatives, written and illustrated by a leading palaeoartist and researcher. It surveys the diversit…

Mauricio Anton · Indiana University Press · 2013

This study examined how sabertooth carnivores killed large prey by comparing the anatomy and inferred mechanics of dirk- and scimitar-toothed forms across multiple lineages. The authors analysed featu…

Ki Andersson, David Norman, Lars Werdelin · PLoS ONE · 2011

This influential book provides a comprehensive illustrated survey of the cat family and its extinct members, combining scientific synthesis with detailed reconstructions of fossil felids and their sab…

Alan Turner, Mauricio Anton · Columbia University Press · 1997