![]() Since the stub is not worn, the encounter may have even caused the cat's death. It's possible the break may relate to a defense wound thanks to a prey animal's well-placed hoof, antler, horn or swat. Morphological details of the fracture edges indicate the damage happened around this animal's time of death. One saber in the Iowa skull is broken off where the canine tooth emerges from the roof of the mouth. Put another way, 40% had survived major head trauma to hunt another day. For instance, a recent study of 166 modern lion skulls from Zambia revealed that 68 had healed or partially healed injuries associated with taking down prey. And attacking large prey equipped with defensive gear like horns, antlers, hooves and trunks is always dangerous and sometimes lethal. ![]() Repeated failure means death from starvation. His learning curve was probably a lot like lions and tigers as they mature physically and behaviorally. He likely garnered experience hunting by first watching his mother locate, stalk, ambush and kill prey and defend the carcasses, then perhaps with her help, and finally, alone. Whatever the case, at two or three years old, the cat obviously possessed the weaponry-jaws and paws-and heft to take down large prey alone. One of this cat’s distinctive sabers was broken off before it died. Other researchers see only minimal size differences and view sabertooth cats generally as solitary predators, perhaps more like tigers and all other felines. In the case of sabertooths, some scholars identify this pronounced sexual dimophisim between the sexes and contend these ancient cats lived in groups, akin to today's lions. In many living animals, males are typically larger than females in male-dominated harems, as in modern lions. Disagreement revolves around just how much of a size difference there is between males and females. ![]() However, whether sabertooths stuck together in groups or were loners is hotly debated. Observations of the life cycles of modern lions and tigers suggest this sabertooth was newly independent or on the cusp of independent living. Given a few years to mature and fill up loose skin, he might have tipped the scale at 650 pounds (300 kilograms). That's upwards of 110 pounds (50 kilograms) greater than the average adult male African lion. We estimate he weighed 550 pounds (250 kilograms). Several bones of the skull have not sealed together and the teeth are basically unworn, leading us to believe this individual was almost certainly a young male between 2 and 3 years old that was still growing. The Iowa skull is larger than those of many adult males from Rancho La Brea. Sabertooths are sexually dimorphic, with males generally larger than females. The animal's common name-sabertooth cat-comes from its highly distinctive, saberlike canine teeth that poke out of the mouth as much as 5 or 6 inches (13 to 15 centimeters). Easterla, and I are studying this specimen to learn more about the life history, prey selection and eventual extinction of this ancient predator. The Smilodon fatalis skull was collected from late Pleistocene sand and gravel exposed along the East Nishnabotna River. That's why the recent discovery of an exquisite sabertooth cat skull in southwestern Iowa is so exciting. The exception comes from Rancho La Brea in downtown Los Angeles, where over 1,000 individual sabertooths were mired in tar-seep death traps. Scientists have a relatively small and scattered inventory of sabertooth fossils. So the probability of burial, storage and discovery of carnivore bones and teeth is therefore slim compared to those belonging to herbivores. Prey are always more abundant than predators in a healthy ecosystem. "When you're a predator, you want to be able to locate your prey as accurately as possible," Gaillard told Live Science.Carnivore fossils are extremely rare, though, in comparison to those of their prey. "What we expect for any carnivore is that usually have very convergent orbits, meaning their vision is oriented toward the front," giving them good depth perception, said study lead author Charlène Gaillard, a postgraduate student at the Argentine Institute of Nivology, Glaciology, and Environmental Sciences (IANIGLA) in Mendoza, Argentina. The team noticed that the animal's odd cranial anatomy stood out compared with other carnivores, such as dogs and cats, whose eyes are more forward-facing to help them track prey, according to the study published Tuesday (March 21) in the journal Communications Biology. Scientists from Argentina and the United States examined computed tomography (CT) scans of the skulls of three of the large predators, which would have weighed roughly 220 pounds (100 kilograms) and went extinct about 3 million years ago. This ferocious marsupial is an extinct mammal from South America scientifically known as Thylacosmilus atrox.
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