A Smilodon fends off vultures at what would later be called the Rancho La Brea tar pits, situated in Los Angeles, California. Painting by Charles R. Knight. The feeding habits of saber-toothed cats ...

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American Ice Age mammals loom large in our imagination ...

In public imagination, the sabre-toothed cat Smilodon ranks alongside Tyrannosaurus rex as the ultimate killing machine. Powerfully built, with upper canines like knives, Smilodon was a fearsome ...

On a superficial level, the predatory habits of the saber-toothed cat Smilodon would not seem to be especially mysterious. Traditionally - and incorrectly - restored as a lion with extra-long upper ...

How did the sabertooth cat wield its excess of tooth? Mark Kostich / iStock Of all the vicious smiles to have ever evolved, it’s hard to beat the grin of the aptly named Smilodon. The largest of these ...

Smilodon was the ultimate sabercat. About the size of a tiger, but with burlier arms and elongated fangs that have made the genus famous, the Ice Age carnivore stalked camels, bison, and other ...

Saber-tooth tigers are right up alongside woolly mammoths as one of the Ice Age's most popular megafauna. With butcher knife-like teeth hanging from their jaws ready to tear apart their prey, these ...

Smilodon is a genus of sabre-toothed cat that lived some 2.5–0.01 million years ago in the forest and bush of the Americas. It is popularly known as the sabre-toothed tiger, although it is not closely ...

This wasn’t always a mystery. If you had the misfortune of being a human being more than 10,000 years ago, there’s a decent chance you were intimately aware of what a saber-tooth cat sounded like.

Sabertoothed cats have a fearsome reputation. In museum halls and in b-movies, the fanged cats are often shown driving their impressive canines into hapless sloths and mammoths as part of a messy, ...

An animal of such habits [as Smilodon] might fulfill the legendary requirements of the ‘King of Beasts’ more nearly than does the lion. It would be bold and fearless of the most powerful, and it might ...