Saber-tooth cats: 28cm fangs of Smilodon
Smilodon weighed 300 kilos with 28-centimeter fangs and ruled the Americas until 10000 years ago.
Twenty-eight centimeters of throat dagger
Smilodon populator weighed 220 to 300 kilograms with shoulders 120 centimeters high, forelimbs like wrestlers and upper canines 28 centimeters long serrated like steak knives.
It stabbed bison throats 500 kilograms heavy after wrestling prey down, opening jugulars in 5 seconds while 8-centimeter gape stretched jaw joints beyond modern lions.
Tar pits and the American end
La Brea tar pits in Los Angeles trapped 2000 Smilodon skulls plus 4000 dire wolves in 50000 years, with 90 percent predators lured by stuck mammoths bellowing over 3 days.
Smilodon vanished 10000 years ago when horses and camels died out on 80 percent of range, and marsupial Thylacosmilus with similar fangs had already ruled South America 3 million years earlier.
- Weight 220 to 300 kg bigger than lions.
- Fangs 28 cm long for throat bites.
- La Brea holds 2000 skulls in tar.
- Lived across Americas until 10000 years ago.
- Not tigers, marsupials evolved same fangs.