Home » Science & Nature » Paleontology » Sabre-toothed Cats

Sabre-toothed Cats

© Beverly Eschberger

When I was a child, I had a set of plastic "dinosaurs" that my Mom bought at the local dime store. Even though the set was labeled as being dinosaurs, two of the animals included were Dimetrodon, and a sabre-toothed cat. Because they are extinct, a lot of people accidentally refer to sabre-toothed cats (often mistakenly called sabre-toothed tigers) as dinosaurs, even though they are mammals.

In the early Cenozoic Era (65 million years ago to the present), some of the members of the Family Felidae (the cats) developed upper canine teeth that were very large. These teeth were used as stabbing weapons to kill their tough-skinned prey, such as mastodons, elephants, brontotheres (not to be confused with brontosaurs!), and rhinoceroses. The sabre-toothed cats were the most formidable mammalian predators for much of the Cenozoic Era.

The origin of the sabre-toothed cats (the subFamily Machairodontinae) is unknown, but they probably shared an ancestor with the true cats (subFamily Felinae) and the "false sabre-tooths" (subFamily Nimravinae, who had only moderately elongated canines). The first sabre-toothed cats appeared during the Eocene Epoch (55 to 36 million years ago).

Dinictis was a North American genus of sabre-toothed cat from the Oligocene Epoch (36 to 22.5 million years ago). It was about the size of a puma, had short, slender limbs, and claws that were partly retractable (modern cats can retract their claws when not in use). Its "sabres" were only a little larger than those of a similarly-sized true cat, and its lower canines were fairly large.

A contemporary of Dinictis was the powerfully built Hoplophoneus, who had developed large sabre-teeth. Hoplophoneus had also developed flanges on its lower jaw to sheeth the upper canines when its mouth was closed. Its lower canines were greatly reduced in size.

Eusmilus, a genus that appeared on the Eurasian continent during the late Eocene epoch, then spread to North America during the Oligocene Epoch, was even more specialized as a predator. Eusmilus had enormous sabres that were protected by deep shields on its lower jaw. Its lower canines were so reduced in size that they resembled the incisor teeth. Compare the Eusmilus skull to that of a modern cat.

During the Miocene Epoch (22.5 to 5 million years ago), the sabre-toothed cats became rare in North America, but remained common in Eurasia, and continued to proliferate into the Pliocene Epoch (5 to 1.8 million years ago).

The copyright of the article Sabre-toothed Cats in Paleontology is owned by . Permission to republish Sabre-toothed Cats in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.