How the Sabre-Toothed Tigers Killed their Prey

Abstract

DURING the greater portion of the third or last great geological epoch—the Tertiary period of geologists—there flourished certain very large and powerful members of the cat tribe, commonly known, on account of the inordinate length of their upper tusks, as sabre-toothed tigers, although there is nothing to show that they had any more affinity with the tiger than with the lion. Indeed, they were widely separated structurally from both, as they were from all living cats. In these sabre-tooths the upper tusks were huge, compressed, scimitar-shaped teeth, with the front and back edges generally, if not always, finely serrated. In some of the later species, which existed contemporaneously with man, the upper tusks were eight or nine inches in length, and they were longest of all in a South American species. In the earlier members of the group, before they had attained the inordinate development characterising the later forms, the upper tusks were protected by a descending flange at the fore part of each side of the lower jaw. Apparently, however, this was not found to be a satisfactory working arrangement, and it was accordingly discarded in the later forms, the tusks of which became proportionately thicker so as to stand in need of no such protection. At the same time the whole lower jaw became remarkably slender and weak, so much so, indeed, that it is evident it could not have been used in the same manner as the lower jaw of a lion or a tiger. Confirmation of this view is afforded by the circumstance that the lower jaw articulates with the skull in quite a different way from that which occurs in the last-mentioned animals.