Oversized teeth helped saber tooths kill prey

Jesus Tamez, 8, a third-grader at W.C. Petty Elementary School in Antioch, asked, "Why do saber tooths have big teeth?"

Saber-toothed mammals lived as far back as 33 million years ago and became extinct about 9,000 years ago. Compare that to dinosaurs, which became extinct 65 million years ago.

Gigantic teeth are what gave the saber-toothed mammals their common name. They were fitted with two huge, knife-like teeth that extended outside of their mouths.

Saber teeth were standard equipment on a few different mammals. One saber tooth was a marsupial like a kangaroo. Another was the size of a bison with an oversize skull and those gigantic teeth. A commonly recognized saber-toothed mammal is Smilodon -- a lion-like mammal.

Smilodon's 7-inch long teeth were probably used to pierce their prey. The puncture could wound an animal enough to kill it. Smilodon was a distant ancestor of the Felidae, but they had to use different techniques to hunt their prey since their body shapes were so different.

The large cats that we're familiar with -- lions and tigers -- are sleek and fast. Smilodon were huge -- twice the weight of a lion or tiger -- and scientists believe they were slow.

Michael Henderson, paleontologist and curator of earth sciences at the Burpee Museum of Natural History in Rockford, explains the difference.

"Saber-toothed cats came up with an efficient way to dispatch their prey by evolving enlarged canines. Big cats, such as lions and tigers, often kill their prey by suffocating it. They bite down on the neck of their prey and cut off its air supply.

"Saber cats took a different approach; one deep bite with their enlarged canines could sever major arteries and the windpipe, shortening the struggle with their prey and making personal injury far less likely."

Smilodon's oversize smile and flashy teeth might remind you of a celebrity with a big grin. Many of these cat ancestors were native to California, which has named Smilodon the state fossil.

Although Smilodon became extinct about 9,000 years ago, scientists today know quite a lot about its eating habits. Thousands of Smilodon bones were discovered in downtown Los Angeles, Calif., at the Rancho La Brea tar pits. Rockford's Burpee Museum has one of those Smilodon skulls.

"Burpee has the skull of a 'saber-toothed tiger' Smilodon on display in its Paleontology exhibits. We also have some older (geologically) and smaller saber-toothed cat specimens in our collections," Henderson said.

A stocky animal, Smilodon was shorter than a lion but much heavier. It had a shorter tail than the faster cats like lions and cheetahs, so it probably stalked its prey at closer distances.

About its taste in food, Henderson said, "Smilodon would have preyed on ancient horse, bison and young mammoths, mastodons and ground sloths."

What happened to the saber-toothed mammal? Changing weather conditions associated with the end of the Ice Age may have wiped out vegetation and the large plant-eating mammals that Smilodon preyed upon, leading to its extinction.

See the Burpee's Smilodon skull and other renown dinosaurs in the museum collection, including Jane, a complete Tyrannosaurs rex skeleton, and Homer, a juvenile Triceratops, at the Burpee museum.

Try your hand at discovering dinosaur bones by attending one of the Burpee Museum's "Family Fossil" field trips. For details, call the Burpee Museum at (815) 965-3433.