🧬 The Felid Wiki — 3,000 research summaries

This study compiled and compared estimated bite forces across many large carnivorous mammals, both living and extinct, to test how bite mechanics relate to predatory behaviour and to predict the habit…

Stephen Wroe, Colin McHenry, Jeffrey Thomason · Proceedings of the Royal Society B · 2005

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

The authors applied dental microwear texture analysis to carnivores from Rancho La Brea, comparing microscopic wear surfaces on the teeth of Smilodon fatalis and other predators across the deposit's c…

Larisa R. G. DeSantis, Blaine W. Schubert, Jessica R. Scott, Peter S. Ungar · PLoS ONE · 2012

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 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 classic study analysed the skull architecture of sabertooth cats to explain how the distinctive cranial features functioned together during the killing bite. The authors examined how the enlarged…

Sharon B. Emerson, Leonard Radinsky · Paleobiology · 1980

This study used geometric morphometrics to chart how skull shape evolved across sabertooth cats and their conical-toothed relatives. By quantifying cranial landmarks in many felid species, the authors…

Graham J. Slater, Blaire Van Valkenburgh · Paleobiology · 2008

This study tested whether Smilodon fatalis was social by treating the Rancho La Brea tar seeps as a fossilized natural experiment. Modern audio playbacks of distressed prey draw social carnivores in f…

Chris Carbone, Tom Maddox, Paul J. Funston, Michael G. L. Mills, Gregory F. Grether, Blaire Van Valkenburgh · Biology Letters · 2009

This work measured carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes in bone collagen from Rancho La Brea mammals, including the predators Smilodon and Panthera atrox alongside their herbivore prey. The isotopic si…

Joan Brenner Coltrain, John M. Harris, Thure E. Cerling, James R. Ehleringer, et al. · Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology · 2004

This overview describes Pit 91, one of the most carefully excavated deposits at Rancho La Brea, and its contribution to sabertooth science. Unlike the rapid early salvage digs of the twentieth century…

This overview examines attempts to track changes in Smilodon fatalis populations across the tens of thousands of years recorded by the Rancho La Brea pits. Because different pits accumulated at differ…

This overview examines Smilodon populator, the largest known sabertooth cat, which roamed the plains and woodlands of Pleistocene South America after felids crossed the Panamanian land bridge. Body-ma…

This overview surveys the fossil record of Smilodon across South America, including the tar seeps of Talara in Peru, which offer a southern counterpart to Rancho La Brea. The continent preserves both…

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 examines how body size influenced which carnivores survived the end-Pleistocene extinctions and which, like the great cats, did not. Large predators tend to have smaller populations, low…

This overview reviews what natural and digital endocasts reveal about the brain of Smilodon. By examining the internal cavity of well-preserved La Brea skulls and using CT scanning to generate virtual…

This overview reviews studies of how the famous sabre canines of Smilodon grew and erupted during an individual's life. Using La Brea specimens spanning juveniles to adults, and incremental growth lin…

This overview surveys studies of how strong, or how vulnerable, the elongated canines of sabertooths actually were. Because the long, blade-like teeth are relatively narrow from side to side, they are…

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 what the claw anatomy of sabertooth cats reveals about how they handled prey. Like living felids, machairodonts had retractile claws, but in robust dirk-toothed forms such as Smi…

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 surveys evidence for ecological interaction and competition between the sabertooth Smilodon fatalis and the dire wolf, the two most abundant large carnivores at Rancho La Brea. Researche…

This overview surveys dental microwear texture analysis, a method that examines microscopic wear features on tooth surfaces to infer what an animal ate shortly before death. In fossil cats, the techni…

This overview reviews how incremental growth lines preserved in sabertooth tooth enamel and dentine are used to reconstruct the developmental schedule of the famous canines. Like tree rings, these mic…

This overview surveys experimental and computational studies that test how sabertooth canines performed when penetrating flesh and bone. Researchers have used physical models, replica teeth, and simul…

This overview surveys how finite-element analysis transformed understanding of sabertooth killing mechanics by revealing an apparent paradox: animals like Smilodon had skulls poorly suited to withstan…

This overview examines the exceptionally powerful forelimbs of Smilodon and what they reveal about how the cat subdued prey. Compared with similarly sized living felids, Smilodon shows thickened limb…

This overview focuses on a specific line of argument about sabertooth behaviour: that severely injured Smilodon individuals survived long enough for their wounds to heal, which some researchers read a…

This overview reviews what the preserved hyoid bones of Smilodon suggest about the sounds the sabertooth may have made. In living cats, the structure of the hyoid apparatus correlates with whether a s…