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Description
Under a full moon on a night 3 million years ago during the late Pliocene epoch of South Africa, a corpse missing its lower half and left up in a tree starts leaking blood and internal organs as they slide out of the huge wound. Not too long ago, this was a healthy adult Australopithecus africanus, an extinct bipedal ape whose species is a potential ancestor of us humans, though this individual died without any descendants. The ape was killed on the savannah by a species of sabertoothed cat known as Megantereon cultridens, which then dragged the carcass up a tree so the cat wouldn't lose its kill to other scavengers like hyenas or lions. The Megantereon has already eaten quite a lot of meat from the Australopithecus and made quite a bloody mess, though it's still not finished and is now full, and it will continue eating the rest later.

Decided to draw something spooky or whatever now that it's the Halloween month of Spooktober. The extinct ape genus Australopithecus contains potentially up to 7 species that lived across Africa during the Pliocene and early Pleistocene, and most famously it is believed that at least one of them is a direct ancestor of the genus Homo, the humans, including us. Like us humans, the Australopithecus species are believed to have walked on their hind limbs, but were probably still good tree climbers that would sleep in the treetops away from the predators on the ground. The first species of the genus to be named was A. africanus, which lived in the savannahs and forests of South Africa. With males standing 140 centimeters tall and females smaller than that, they were quite a bit smaller than us humans (it seems to be a common misconception that Australopithecus was around our height). While we humans today tend to think of ourselves ranking above all other life forms on the food chain, the same could not be said for Australopithecus, and having not yet discovered fire plus only having very limited (if any) tool use, our ape ancestors were prey to various animals like big cats, hyenas and wild dogs. Australopithecus lived at a time still quite a while before the machairodontine cats, commonly called sabertooth cats, went extinct, and those would have been a major threat to our ancestors.

Like most other large cats, the machairodontines would have largely preyed on ungulates like antelopes, horses and deer, but some species would also have made short work of primates including hominine apes like Australopithecus. Perhaps largely due to the documentary Walking With Beasts, Dinofelis is the sabertooth cat most commonly thought of as the killer of hominids, as it was described as being poorly adapted to chasing fleet-footed antelopes and horses in the open savannnah but better at killing primates. The reality is quite the opposite though, and carbon isotope ratios suggests that such grazing ungulates were the main prey of Dinofelis and it hunted primates less frequently. However, analysis on another sabertooth cat from Pliocene Africa, Megantereon, showed more indication of primate hunting, so niche partitioning probably allowed the two cats to coexist with minimum competition, Dinofelis hunting mainly ungulates and Megantereon being more of a primate killer. Although it was a big animal growing 1.5 meters long, Megantereon would've been capable of climbing trees, so it could climb after the monkeys and apes as they seeked refuge in the branches. There is also a skull from a Homo erectus, an archaic human, showing bite marks matching Megantereon, so it seems this animal was a major threat to our ancestors. The genus Megantereon was actually quite widespread, with maybe 8 species distributed across Africa, Asia, Europe and North America from the early Pliocene to the Middle Pleistocene, and the type species M. cultridens lived in southern Europe and Africa, overlapping with Australopithecus africanus, so I went with those two species.

Of course, the sabertooth cats died out with no descendants surviving up to today while we humans are now found across the globe in huge numbers so I guess we win the long battle, but with how much damage we cause the planet I don't really think we're actually winning that much. And personally I think earth's ecosystems would be more healthy and diverse with the sabertooths still here (I mean ever since they died out bison have no real predator, wolves only hunt them much less frequently than many think).

Description
Under a full moon on a night 3 million years ago during the late Pliocene epoch of South Africa, a corpse missing its lower half and left up in a tree starts leaking blood and internal organs as they slide out of the huge wound. Not too long ago, this was a healthy adult Australopithecus africanus, an extinct bipedal ape whose species is a potential ancestor of us humans, though this individual died without any descendants. The ape was killed on the savannah by a species of sabertoothed cat known as Megantereon cultridens, which then dragged the carcass up a tree so the cat wouldn't lose its kill to other scavengers like hyenas or lions. The Megantereon has already eaten quite a lot of meat from the Australopithecus and made quite a bloody mess, though it's still not finished and is now full, and it will continue eating the rest later.

Decided to draw something spooky or whatever now that it's the Halloween month of Spooktober. The extinct ape genus Australopithecus contains potentially up to 7 species that lived across Africa during the Pliocene and early Pleistocene, and most famously it is believed that at least one of them is a direct ancestor of the genus Homo, the humans, including us. Like us humans, the Australopithecus species are believed to have walked on their hind limbs, but were probably still good tree climbers that would sleep in the treetops away from the predators on the ground. The first species of the genus to be named was A. africanus, which lived in the savannahs and forests of South Africa. With males standing 140 centimeters tall and females smaller than that, they were quite a bit smaller than us humans (it seems to be a common misconception that Australopithecus was around our height). While we humans today tend to think of ourselves ranking above all other life forms on the food chain, the same could not be said for Australopithecus, and having not yet discovered fire plus only having very limited (if any) tool use, our ape ancestors were prey to various animals like big cats, hyenas and wild dogs. Australopithecus lived at a time still quite a while before the machairodontine cats, commonly called sabertooth cats, went extinct, and those would have been a major threat to our ancestors.

Like most other large cats, the machairodontines would have largely preyed on ungulates like antelopes, horses and deer, but some species would also have made short work of primates including hominine apes like Australopithecus. Perhaps largely due to the documentary Walking With Beasts, Dinofelis is the sabertooth cat most commonly thought of as the killer of hominids, as it was described as being poorly adapted to chasing fleet-footed antelopes and horses in the open savannnah but better at killing primates. The reality is quite the opposite though, and carbon isotope ratios suggests that such grazing ungulates were the main prey of Dinofelis and it hunted primates less frequently. However, analysis on another sabertooth cat from Pliocene Africa, Megantereon, showed more indication of primate hunting, so niche partitioning probably allowed the two cats to coexist with minimum competition, Dinofelis hunting mainly ungulates and Megantereon being more of a primate killer. Although it was a big animal growing 1.5 meters long, Megantereon would've been capable of climbing trees, so it could climb after the monkeys and apes as they seeked refuge in the branches. There is also a skull from a Homo erectus, an archaic human, showing bite marks matching Megantereon, so it seems this animal was a major threat to our ancestors. The genus Megantereon was actually quite widespread, with maybe 8 species distributed across Africa, Asia, Europe and North America from the early Pliocene to the Middle Pleistocene, and the type species M. cultridens lived in southern Europe and Africa, overlapping with Australopithecus africanus, so I went with those two species.

Of course, the sabertooth cats died out with no descendants surviving up to today while we humans are now found across the globe in huge numbers so I guess we win the long battle, but with how much damage we cause the planet I don't really think we're actually winning that much. And personally I think earth's ecosystems would be more healthy and diverse with the sabertooths still here (I mean ever since they died out bison have no real predator, wolves only hunt them much less frequently than many think).