Scientists Discover How Saber-Toothed Tigers Used Their Long Teeth

Visitors tour a California Saber-Tooth fossil exhibit on the reopening day of the George C. Page Museum at the La Brea Tar PitsSaber-toothed tigers – along with woolly mammoths, American lions, and other giant animals – lived during the Pleistocene Epoch (23 million to 10,000 years ago). Saber-toothed tigers were animals that were the heroes of ancient myth usually depicted as predators with huge fangs that terrified all the herbivorous inhabitants of the planet.The now-extinct saber-toothed tiger was so-called for its long fangs, like sabers, sticking out of its mouth. And, apparently, it could disembowel any opponent. But how practical were such big teeth, given that the big prehistoric cats would have had to open their mouth inconveniently wide (more than 90 degrees) to strike with them? Modern tigers are not capable of this. A team of researchers led by Narimane Chatar, a doctoral student at the EDDyLab of the University of Liège in Belgium, estimated the biomechanics of saber-toothed tigers by studying their preserved skulls. Belgian scientists studied the jaws of 17 species, simulating a total of 1,074 bites. It turned out that saber-toothed tigers without any harm to themselves grinned in the most extreme way, putting their “sabers” forward. They opened their jaws as wide as 110 degrees – almost the maximum angle – as they were anatomically adapted to it.‘Perfect and Beautiful’ Remains of Baby Mammoth Found in Canada28 June, 19:00 GMTPreviously, scientists from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, US, said that saber-toothed cats and lions had no problems with food. According to the researchers, this allows us to say with certainty that saber-toothed predators and lions went extinct not because of a lack of food, but for other reasons, which remain unknown.

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