One of the best known of all the extinct ice age animals, the powerfully built sabre-tooth cat was equipped with lethal knife-like canine teeth. The sabre-tooth used these to inflict fatal wounds on mammalian prey such as bison and sheep.

Statistics
Height: 1m (3ft) at shoulder, Length: 2m (6’6”ft) from rump to snout, Weight: 300kg (750lbs)

Physical description
A large, powerful and muscular cat slightly smaller than modern African lions but much more heavily built. Sabre-tooths had extremely long, sharp canine teeth which they used to slash through the throat or underbelly of their prey. There is no evidence as to what colour or pattern the sabre-tooth had. Like modern cat species, it may have been spotted, striped or even plain in colour, like modern African lions and mountain lions (cougars).

Distribution
Sabre-tooths roamed through much of North America except for the far north and through South America, along the Pacific coast.

Habitat
Sabre-tooths inhabited wooded grasslands, scrublands and savannahs.

Diet
Sabre-tooths were carnivores, active predators that hunted medium-sized mammals including bison, horses and deer. They were also scavengers.

Behaviour
Scientists disagree as to whether or not sabre-tooth cats were social animals. Few modern cat species are social so it is likely that sabre-toothed cats were mainly solitary or lived in pairs. Some scientists have suggested that they may have been more like African lions and lived in prides.

Conservation status
Extinct from approximately 12,500 years ago.

Voice
Sabre-tooth cats had hyoid bones. These are found in the throat and they support the larynx. They are only found in cats that roar, especially social cats such as lions that need to communicate with each other in complex ways and over large distances. If they could roar like a lion perhaps they lived in similar social groupings.

Notes
Much of the evidence about sabre-tooth cats has come from the Rancho La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. Here tar seeps from the ground and has been trapping animals for thousands of years. Amongst the finds are the remains of around 2,000 individual sabre-tooth cats.

History
Amongst the most recent of the sabre-tooth cats, Smilodon fatalis was one of three species that lived in the Americas. Smilodon's ancestor was probably another sabre-tooth species, Megantereon, which lived in Africa, Eurasia and North America.

Closest relative
Modern cats.