Maybe I'm biased being Australian, but I'd like to see a deep dive on the marsupial lion. It was even more tanky than the sabretooth iirc. I think one of it's ancestors possibly mated with a Sherman tank.
The animals of Tazmania that died off a century ago alone were insanely unique! As a lizard fan your country is a paradise to me. Frilled, Beardies, Water Dragons, monitors, it would never get old. Doesn't get much cooler than a Dingo either when it comes to modern decendants of the wolf. I would love to see them in person
@@DigitalDuelist funny, was petting a dingo down the zoo not long ago. Can confirm they are very cute Our bird population is pretty awesome as well, like I've seen 7 or 8 kinds of parrots or whatever fancy term there is for them in my garden alone and I don't even know how many more on my travels. All sorts of birds of prey etc as well.
What you said at the end really made me think, smilodons prey started to go extinct around 11,000 years ago. That is not very long at all. There have been ruins discovered that old, and modern humans have been around since long before then. That's just kind of wild to think about.
Its also kind of wild of the idea of dinosaurs not being millions of years old and are thousands of years old, who really knows what scientists are hiding or what kind of false information we are given.
@@MrMarinus18 If your point is that they had plenty of food, therefore must have died for some other reason than starvation. I offer this for you to consider. The few mega fauna that survived the cataclysmic ending of the ice age, shrunk almost to half their size. The Irish Elk, Moose, and Bison found in the La Brea Tar Pits were more than 50% bigger than today's average size animal. This speaks to a genetic bottle neck, and sparse grazing. So, instead of herds of prey animals as far as the eye could see, they had to search far and wide for a few elk here and there, and the bison disappeared West of he great plains, It makes sense that the great predators couldn't find enough calories to stay alive. Condors once covered the continent from Atlantic to Pacific, but died out except for in California, because the only source of carrion that could sustain them was dead seals, and whales that wash up on shore. This video is playing it safe, politically, and just makes the point that the smilodon is one example of the downside of overspecializing. Archeology can teach us universal life lessons. Unfortunately, the part at the end where he said the animals died off "for whatever reason", he would be lambasted if he even listed the various hypotheses, because science is political.
I’ve never been into paleontology and I’m not sure why it was recommended to me. But, I gave your videos a chance and have loved them ever since! You sparked an interest in a topic I would’ve never thought I’d be so fascinated by. Thank you.
It was actually one of the first fossil mammals I got to know: nl in a European set cartoon about cavemen of which one of them had it as a companion, actually a smilodon with a long tail, only later I understood that the Smilodon was not European and did have a bobtail. The comic was called Tounga and edited in Belgium.
@@Whosaskin yup, sabertooths short faced bears and a ton of other animals suddenly died out because of a mass extinction event that was the biggest one in the past 5 million years
The social predator theory makes a lot of sense given that social predators that hunt large prey usually have excessive weaponry to deal with excessively large targets, and are usually highly offense-oreiented because individuals within the pack will momentarily disengage to counter enemy attacks while their comrades continue their own attacks, instead of defending or tanking the attack. They also can afford to take more damaging hits because they don't individually starve if they can't hunt. Given prey animals usually don't have effective omnidirectional attacks, that's a pretty good strategy. Examples include: African wild dogs: Most flesh-cutting molars and highest relative bite strength of the dogs. Wolves: bite strength high for their size. Social insects: Stings and formic sprays that can hurt things many times their size. Often formidable jaws as well. Hyenas: again with the crazy biteforce. Humans: extreme threat to megafauna using bladed flint and obsidian projectiles.
Because lions faced unique environment and challenges they developed ways to combat that with forming prides: a single lion taking on herbivores in Africa can easily get them killed, I imagine a group of smilodons would have grouped up on giant camels or mammoths likewise. It also helps them secure kills versus other group predators and they can defend each other. A lot of pressure was put on lions to strictly form prides for hunting and survival, while leopards are faster ambush cats and exceptionally good at climbing to escape danger.
I never thought about the problems those teeth might cause. All I ever saw was giant scary teeth. Kinda silly that it never occurred to me that they would need to open their mouths so wide to even use those things. I just found your channel and I'm enjoying binging your videos!
@@Svensk7119 No it wouldn't. It could keep its mouth shut and drive the exposed part of the canines in and out of its quarry, repeatedly, causing massive bleeding and internal damage. Populator's canines reached a foot in length, and they had very flat lower jaws. So we're talking about 9 inches (that's what she said.) of closed-jaw canines that could be plunged deep inside (that's what she said) populator's victims. In fact, one populator skull has 16 inch canines!
@@Svensk7119 They were strong enough for quick plunges. The video said that they would hold off on using their teeth until they had immobilized their quarry, which they were quite capable of doing, as the most powerful "cat" to ever roam the earth.
Attacking big animals is dangerous and so the safest way to do it is to catch them off guard and deal as much damage as possible in one good hit and that's what Smilodon is specialized to do. Lions actually rarely take big dangerous animals cause they usually have to use an enormous amount of energy to bring them down and the risk of serious injury is very high. When you have animals like lions and wolves one thing they often struggle with is dealing enough damage quickly enough to actually kill it. I actually would think Smilodon would have quite a low success rate while hunting. That it had a very all-or-nothing sort of strategy. That if it failed to bring it down within the first minute it usually would run since again big animals are dangerous. Also the biggest advantage of pack behavior is actually social insurance which is important when hunting dangerous animals. Being part of a pack means you can take a lot of risks since if you get hurt you have a family to nurse you back to health.
its crazy to think most of today's animals were around back then too, its just that all the big ones died out. For me the saddest ones are the ground sloths, giant anteaters are one of the few animals that can fight off a jaguar and have similar builds to ground sloths. So many of today's animals are just holdovers from that time, pronghorns, polar bears, musk ox, wolverines, and even many plants like avocados. Just leftovers from long gone ecosystems, the same thing still happens today the some species are running away from ghosts.
What's crazy is that sometimes they prey species of these large predators survive with the evolutionary traits they needed to survive being hunted. We have Deer run as fast as a cheetah because cheetahs existed in America before the last Ice Age. They died off but the deer remain and are still lightning fast.
@@DigitalDuelist That's what the original commenter mentioned - pronghorns. They're not deer though, they're actually more closely related to giraffids. In fact they're the only surviving member of their clade; in a sense they're a remnant of the Pleistocene themselves.
its strange in north america that 13 out of 14 species of pronghorn antelope, animals that when compared to bison elk and moose are much lighter, way more agile, and much faster, all died out yet animals that are much easier to spot and catch like bison, elk and moose are still alive
@@21LAZgoo Elk and bison didn’t have it all good though. There were plenty of species of bison in the past in North America alone, and some of them were much bigger than the modern bison. A lot of these species died out by the end of the glacial period, leaving one species in North America and one species in Europe.
Fascinating stuff. I'm so interested in the rest of this series. Great work compiling, editing, and narrating all of this information in such an easy-to-understand format.
The specialist/generalist thing is so true about people in the professional world too. People who hyper-specialize tend to be the most in-demand employees, but when an industry changes they're hit the hardest. Meanwhile "jack of all trades" types tend to be middling in terms of marketability and income, but they have the easiest time to adapt to new economic or industrial trends.
Most cat species (there are exceptions) seem to be built to kill their prey quickly. Even our domestic cats are built for this. Not only are their canines long enough to reach the spinal column of the rodents they prey on, the gap between them is sized so that when the teeth go in, they slide between the vertebrae and prise them apart, severing the spinal cord. Their canines are also sharp enough to pierce the skulls of small mammals. I know this because I had a collection of skulls of animals that one of my long passed on cats brought home from his hunting trips. I had bird skulls, squirrel skulls, rabbit skulls and even a hedgehog skull, but the most valued were a pair of weasel or stoat skulls. I got the skulls by burying the bodies in the back garden and leaving them for a year which was usually long enough to clean the skeletons. What was surprising about the weasel skulls was that both had circular depressed skull fractures, in the centre of which was a single small round hole. Neither body showed signs of other damage, so I assume that Tabby ( the cat's name) must have grabbed the animal and bit down straight away. As to where he found them, he was a veteran rabbit hunter, and the railway bank at the bottom of our garden was a massive rabbit warren. I guess he met those unfortunate weasels whilst he and they were hunting the same stretch of warren
Thanks for the video and your channel, loving it! I'd love to see you do a piece on the Australian Thylacoleo Carnifex, otherwise known as the marsupial lion. Keep up the good work my friend.
I went to the La Brea tar pits as a child and was so enamored I wasted a fortune on a totally unused degree. But Mr. Smiley was def on my top 5s at age 8. I just found your channel, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge with all of us 🌈
By the way. Some paleontologists theorize that Smilodon had massive lips to hide their long dagger fangs due to a cave painting discovered by explores. What do you think, are their theories scientifically plausible?
It is believed that an animal known as Thylacosmilus, an extinct marsupial from South America had large canine teeth much like Smilodon, had big lips which hid the teeth when their mouth was closed. Someone else already mentioned that some modern day mammals like hippos and baboons have big lips that hide their huge canine teeth, so yes I would say it could definitely be possible. Who knows? This is where I really wish we could through a time portal like the one on Nigel Marven’s Prehistoric Park and find out.
I know they figured that for Homotherium, but didn't see anything for Smilodon's sabers being covered by lips. Mammalian enamel doesn't need to be constantly bathed, unlike sauropsid enamel.
There was this one guy who said "Among the engineers, I am the best cook, and among the cooks I am the best engineer." He was not a master of the craft at either one of them, but his point still stands. I guess we can say that only during stable times speciliziation is a good thing, but sadly we never know when those times come to an end.
Smilodon is a interesting saber toothed cat but I'd really, really, love to hear more about Xenosmilus Hodsonae. Who was more likely larger than smilodon populator and unlike smilodon which had long yet narrower saber teeth that could theoretically break, Xenosmilus's saber teeth were long and robust. It's a sabertooth cat with a bite like a great white shark. So it was bigger with more massive and thick teeth. Called the cookie-cutter cat because it bit chunks out of its prey and could just wait while prey bled out or went into shock. There isn't much else I know about this 'cat' but would love to know more about this massive predator.
Love this channel. Studying all life forms back to beginning of life on this planet really opens the mind. Raises so many environmental & other questions even for nonscientific people. My personal favorite extinct animal is Australian thylacine who dies just as begin reliably recording species. Maybe an episode on extinct Marsupial predators. Don't really know what thylacine evolved to hunt. Thanks.
You bring up the barborofelids (forgive my lack of spelling/mishearing), go on, and they say that you'll talk about the other "macheradontid(sp?) sabertooth cats that we won't talk about right now, and possibly have a seperate video on them - I would love a separate video on them, and know what mad ethe barborofelids different. I absolutely understand that you can't let people think that what you're talking about was the only thing like it... and yet name dropping different creatures makes me want to know more.... I did read _The Dinosaur Heracies_ (Bakker is the author, I believe) cover to cover, twice, the year it came out (I was in middle school), so I think I can argue to being a paleo nerd... I would also like to say that I'm really glad that you say you'd "love people to subscribe" rather than the much more pushy directions from many other you-tubers. There are those who I will actually never subscribe to, because of how they mention that request. You're a cool dude, talking about cool stuff - glad you're here.
Felis sylvestris. I have 3. One elderly and two less than a year old. They are incredibly observant, clever and are good problem solvers. I wish I could train both of the young cats to scratch only where I want them to but ....well...I'm working on it. Raising these kittens is almost exactly like raising a 2 year old. They reach for new things; they explore new things, they eat new things (my medications and packets of silicone packets) and everything is a toy...my earphones. My computer keyboard. My toes. They make and maintain eye contact. If they are gently nudged away from mischief, they will pretend that they are innocent and compliant....for about 20 seconds. I love them for their encroachments and transgressions. I love that they jump on my lap and demand my attention. they do wonders for my mental health and for my blood pressure
I would love to see the difference between the smallest smilodon and modern cats. They really remind me of the lynx we have now. Do you have all the smilodon skull models or just the one? The simularites and differences in build would be very interesting also. Love what I am learning from you on all topics.
Ironically I actually just got a S. gracilis skull cast but it is a little messed up and I need to fix it up a bit before it's ready to show off. I will say this species is bigger than a Lynx though. Probably more like a large Puma for scale.
I'd like to see a deep dive on all prehistoric big cats (and maybe cheetahs). The Pleistocene was a golden age for them and and love to hear your take on it!
I don't see anything incorrect with calling it a tiger which was what it was commonly called when I was a kid (back in the Stone Age, lol). It's just a layman's term. After all, the Latin American people call the jaguar El Tigre en Espanol. We also call pumas mountain lions (as well as cougars, catamounts, king cats, boomers, panthers---the Florida subspecies--etc.). We call Thylacines Tasmanian Tigers or Wolves; the Maned Wolf is not a wolf but closer to foxes; the Falkland Island Fox was not a fox; and Tasmanian Devils are not devils. Probably it did not have stripes like a modern tiger but it may have had a relative in a different habitat that did have similar stripes.
So, I do see your point for sure and I do not personally take nearly as much issue with people using that terminology as some others in my field of study, I really more brought that up as a point to get into the subject that out of all the possible color patterns, tiger like stripes are probably the least likely. I'm not one of those people who will correct any person who uses the term 'saber toothed tiger' unless the conversation actually includes me explaining the differences between them and modern cats. 🙂
@@PaleoAnalysis Koolasuchus for the amphibians, but an exploration of Diplo-amphibians also welcome (why did they evolve boomerang shaped heads ?), early sailback reptiles such as Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus (which of the sail purpose theories do you agree with ?), and Dunkleosteus for the prehistoric fish, although there are already many Dunkleosteus videos.
New subscriber here, and I’ve only caught a handful of your vids so far, but I’m really digging(pun intended) what you’re doing. Really great, insightful and fascinating stuff. Keep up the good work :)
Excellent, and informative video. I get shivers imagining a mob of bear-shaped cats the size of a lion. What do you think of DeSantis et al (2012)? This study found little evidence to support declining prey was a major factor in the extinction of Smilodon.
After studying the fauna of the pre ice age America's and Europe I became convinced that every child's inherent, irrational fear of "monsters" is rooted in very real and scary history where we were on the menu of large cats and cave bears.
I would say it's for precisely that reason, although with the caveat that it's not simply a relic of prehistory, it very much applies to modern fauna too. It's an inherent fear of being consumed, something instinctual. When I was kid, I was afraid of monsters generally, but more specifically wolves (or rather, our mytho-cultural concept of them, passed down to me through tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and the like). I was afraid of being eaten.
Long before I knew anything at all, before even teenage years, these gargantuan teeth really were bewildering. Figured they'd only be safely deployed as slashing in a dagger-like manner into soft tissues like the abdomen of prey. Going for the neck affords the prey animal some leverage of its forelimbs, and seems risky. In any case, it would pretty much require a pack-hunting cooperation by more than 3 or 4 cats & seems attacks from beneath the prey animals as a necessity. Cooperative hunting is seldom seen among tiger / leopard siblings, unlike prides of lionesses.
Very helpful & interesting- I didn’t realize all the differences there were between the species/classifications!!! 🙂🙂❤️ ….yet slightly dry at times, like my Paleobiology professor at KU!! :)
i used to give tours at the la brea tar pits/page museum in L.A. and i'm a major pleistocene geek excellent vid. i believe smilodon was social and definitely did not have stripes but why they died out while the jaguar and mountain lion remained is a mystery that i don't believe will ever be solved definitely. all anybody has are theories they may try to convince you they know but in the end theories are as good as it gets. either way even though that branch of the feline family is gone and were only distantly related to pantera leo stripes in general are extremely rare on cats so i defintely vote that one down.
Enjoyed this video, would love to see you do one on the Entelodonts I saw pictured here a few times, and possibly the evolution of the Ursine family. :D
By way of suggestion for topic; Marsupials (I'm Australian), as you mentioned convergent evolution with images of the Tasmanian Tiger (RIP) and the Wolf (resurrected), there is the Australian "Drop Bear" which was closer to a cat than the Tassie Tiger, at least by appearance, or again, by convergent evolution. There were also supersized Platypus, and further back to its early post CT mass extinction the Dinosaur Bird Cassowary, as a hint for dino vocals via that structure on their head, and the Python from central Queensland fossil site once named "Montypythonoides" which would give an Anaconda or a Burmese python a reason to remove themselves from a territorial dispute, back when it were more like the Daintree in ecosystem, wetter, more tropical rainforest, complete with poisonous vegetation ensuring less likelihood of getting eaten, with delayed pain after contact by touch with tiny silica hairs...
There was a theory around some time ago that sabretooths hunted with a strategy of injuring the prey on the fly with those immense fangs, then waiting for blood loss, shock, or even infection to weaken the prey so it could be safely killed. From what you've said about the structural weakness of the fangs, this sounds less likely. Did other groups of predators that convergently developed huge fangs share the same weakness? IIRC, a disproportionate number of sabretooths found at La Brea were subadult males. This might support the social lifestyle theory, as with many social mammals, it's the young males which are driven out to find their own fortune, and the young females stay with the group. These naive young animals, probably also quite hungry away from the pack, might be more likely to fall for the easy meal presented by animals trapped in the tar. I enjoy your videos and look forward to more.
Your channel is so cool. I already heard about the reason they died out was that their prey died out. But this is the first time I heard they might live and hunt in packs. Every day you can learn something new. And this tima it was a very cool something.
Smilodon were likely scavengers not hunters. At 19:15 the leopard skull is a great example of a jaw designed for bite force, while smilodon's lower jaw clearly lacks the surface area to support the musculature needed for such a task.
I've realized that I was obsessed with sabertooth cat as a kid. Still have a figure of one on my shelf. But. Now that I discovered all the other very similar types of saber toothed cats and I've grown to like those ones more because to me, the teeth are too oversized and it must have limited it's uses. It must of had to be able to open it's mouth so far that it's bite had to of been impacted by this.. you can't have both, super flexible, and super strong. Usually it's a little more of a balance to get the best of both worlds and I like the saber toothed cat that had shorter saber teeth that were alot more sharp teeth I heard. Also I love that one unique cat that had a almost Hyena type posture or bear. Idk. Sorry I don't know the exact names of the species.
One of my all-time favorite extinct animals. In domestic cats a broken canine is considered a veterinary emergency. The tooth shape of smilodon looks better suited to hobbling prey, slicing through the hamstrings, similar to Rhodesian ridgebacks. My cat is minus four teeth, including an upper canine, and he'll bite into some of his food from the side with his back teeth. Question: More attention has been drawn lately to predators collaborating on hunts, from corvids & wolves to eels and groupers. Any chance these might have had a similar relationship with another predator? Two differently specialized predators could have had a better chance working together against large prey. We may find it more normal for prey species to intermingle for benefits, but that's ignoring two large groups of predators that mingle: humans and canines. And back in the early days of whaling, orcas would help and basically trained humans to work with them. Plenty of us have developed complex relationships with our domestic cats, and falconers are still around, too.
I am fascinated by motions and the calicotheres !! They look like a rhino crossed with …. Heaven only knows what !! They say those clawed front feet were for digging. Digging what ?? Maybe it makes more sense that they were for pulling down branches like therozinosaurs or ground sloths. Anyway, I would love a deep dive into these bizarre creatures.
peregrine falcons are actually similar to sabre-tooths if you look at it. Basically the closest thing to a sabre-toothed dinosaur, only sabre-beaked instead
An ironic thing about Smilodon (at least fatalis) was that it was actually better suited to WARMER intervals, not glacials. It (and presumably much of its prey base) was more suited for the climate that exists today (and the spread of forest cover that came with it) than the “ice age” climate.
@@PaleoAnalysis Actually populator was the member of the genus most suited to grassland habitats associated with glacials (though even it could be found in tropical climates).
I was referring to how far north specimens have been found. Saying that of the three species, fatalis was the most northern that was know about. Although as a whole all three species were more common across the southern half of the US and into central and South America. Scimitar Cats like Homotherium seemed to be the most well suited of Macharidonts to cooler climates.
@@PaleoAnalysis Do keep in mind the northernmost S. fatalis remains likely come from interglacials. S. populator was exclusively South American, so in its case, it would have gotten colder the further south it went. Remember: in the Southern Hemisphere, the latitude gets higher the further south you go, the opposite of the Northern Hemisphere.
Did smilodon use it’s long sabres to gouge out a chunk of flesh from a megafauna then follow that injured animal until it’s death? If so presumably they would hunt in packs since that would be more efficient as a large animal would feed many cats. You could imagine a pride of sabre cats following mammoths, singling out their chosen prey animal, harassing that animal, eventually one would bite a chunk of flesh from the stomach or back legs dooming that animal which would slow down, eventually succumbing to it’s injuries.
You need to do more research on the many varieties of Smilodon including the living relative, the Clouded Leopard. Which, like many subspecies, have long tails
The clouded leopard is neither a variety nor living relative of _Smilodon_ . It's no closer related to _Smilodon_ than any other extant felid because all living cats are either felines or pantherines (the clouded leopard belonging to the latter clade) whereas _Smilodon_ is a machairodontine, as stated in the video. I think you're confusing the fact that clouded leopards are often compared to machairodonts because they have the largest canines in proportion to body size of any living cat, for an evolutionary relationship. That is not the case. They just have big teeth haha
I’m really enjoying your videos. Good concise information though I’m not so sure about Tim-Tim (hope the spelling is correct) although a bit of humour always makes it more fun to learn.
I find it very funny that they depict these sabertooth tigers with their mouth fully open. And you can see that they cannot bite this way. and if they tried, it would put their huge tusk-like-teeth in extreme jeopardy, of getting busted in a violent takedown of its prey. I believe they used their tusks more to cling on to their prey just by keeping their mouth shut and using their tusks as a hook and balance. also for helping them climb icy ledges. possibly even for climbing trees to a certain extent. I believe they used their powerful claws for doing most of damage to its prey, ripping open vital areas and veins etc. you can see they could only rip away at the meet with their front incisors. they could not take big bites of meat when finally eating!,,, because of their tusks in the way. to open the jaw so huge actually makes the jaw muscles vulnerable to damage from a thrashing animals or what have you. you can see they cannot bite with their tusks, only used as a type of gripping by clenching the jaws and using the neck muscles. look how powerfully they are built with the shorter legs and huge shoulders. I believe that they're legs did most of the kill damage to their prey.
just a personal theory ive had, would a Smilodon need to open its mouth at all? using its head like a pick axe to hack and slash at pry or to pin it between its chin and chest. picture a smilodon jump on something like a mammoth and use its wait to drag its closed mouth fangs through its side. the smilodon would perhaps just wait for it to bleed out and track it for a distance.
I have considered this idea before just for fun but I'm not sure if it would have happened.. who knows tho? Nature seems to always be able to surprise even our greatest imagination.
His skull is absolutely enormous compared to the leopard skull, even though leopards aren't exactly what I call small. This shows us how big they actually were, I'm pretty sure that people who live in those areas are glad they're no longer around.
