Kingdom:Animalia
Phylum:Chordata
Class:Mammalia
Order:Carnivora
Family:Felidae
Subfamily:†Machairodontinae
Genus:†Smilodon
HISTORY
Smilodon ,or also named as the sabre-toothed cat, is extinct. This saber-toothed cats that lived about 2.5 million to 10,000 years ago in the North and South of America. Part of their name is "saber-toothed" because of the amazing length of their canines. The most massively built carnivore had reached a mass of up to about 400 kg. A full grown Smilodon weighed around 55-300 kilograms.
DIET
Smilodon hunted on preys like bison, elk, deer, American camels, horses, ground sloths and mammoths and mastodons.
Big cats now like lions and tigers kill by strangling their victims, which would take a few minutes. Smilodon’s jaw muscles were most likely too weak for this and its long canines would have been vulnerable to snapping in a prolonged struggle.
Smilodon was said to use its great upper-body strength to wrestle prey onto the ground, its long canines were for delivering a bite to the throat which would generally cut through the jugular vein and thus kills the prey very quickly.
EXTINCTION
It was said that it was extinct because of a huge ice age.
HABITAT
Smilodon ,or also named as the sabre-toothed cat, is extinct. This saber-toothed cats that lived about 2.5 million to 10,000 years ago in the North and South of America. Part of their name is "saber-toothed" because of the amazing length of their canines. The most massively built carnivore had reached a mass of up to about 400 kg. A full grown Smilodon weighed around 55-300 kilograms.
DIET
Smilodon hunted on preys like bison, elk, deer, American camels, horses, ground sloths and mammoths and mastodons.
Big cats now like lions and tigers kill by strangling their victims, which would take a few minutes. Smilodon’s jaw muscles were most likely too weak for this and its long canines would have been vulnerable to snapping in a prolonged struggle.
Smilodon was said to use its great upper-body strength to wrestle prey onto the ground, its long canines were for delivering a bite to the throat which would generally cut through the jugular vein and thus kills the prey very quickly.
EXTINCTION
It was said that it was extinct because of a huge ice age.
HABITAT
Smilodon might have been living in grasslands and also pine forests with rocky soil. Alot of the Smilodon fossils had been discovered in areas like these.
VIDEO
You can go to
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYe2zQ7jJ2k
To watch two videos on the Smilodon.
References:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smilodon
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