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Description
After a tiresome day, a Megantereon sp prepares to get some much needed R & R.

This took me nearly 2 months, mostly because looking at it made me really sleepy 😴

Now contrary to popular belief, sabertoothed cats weren't actually related to tigers or any extant cats, they belonged to their own separate branch of the cat family tree called the machairodontinae.
There were numerous species of sabertooth, some as small as caracals while others were the size of Bengal tigers.

Megantereon was among the first sabertoothed cats to be formally described. It was the size of a jaguar or large leopard, and may have had a similar lifestyle. It had a wide distribution, from Eurasia & Africa to North America. The North American sps is also believed to have been the ancestor of the most famous sabertooth, Smilodon, aka the saber-toothed tiger - again not a tiger.

Megantereon is also famous for another reason: it's one of the few prehistoric animals that we know for sure hunted early humans.

Despite being among the most famous prehistoric animals, sabertooths are very poorly understood. How did they hunt with those ridiculously long teeth? How did they coexist with the big cats (pantherinae) for millions of years? And why did they go extinct while the big cats survived?

Description
After a tiresome day, a Megantereon sp prepares to get some much needed R & R.

This took me nearly 2 months, mostly because looking at it made me really sleepy 😴

Now contrary to popular belief, sabertoothed cats weren't actually related to tigers or any extant cats, they belonged to their own separate branch of the cat family tree called the machairodontinae.
There were numerous species of sabertooth, some as small as caracals while others were the size of Bengal tigers.

Megantereon was among the first sabertoothed cats to be formally described. It was the size of a jaguar or large leopard, and may have had a similar lifestyle. It had a wide distribution, from Eurasia & Africa to North America. The North American sps is also believed to have been the ancestor of the most famous sabertooth, Smilodon, aka the saber-toothed tiger - again not a tiger.

Megantereon is also famous for another reason: it's one of the few prehistoric animals that we know for sure hunted early humans.

Despite being among the most famous prehistoric animals, sabertooths are very poorly understood. How did they hunt with those ridiculously long teeth? How did they coexist with the big cats (pantherinae) for millions of years? And why did they go extinct while the big cats survived?