Wen 丨 Charcoal roasted pig's head
"Saber-toothed tiger" is a very painful concept, as I have repeatedly emphasized in previous Weibo, it is not a prehistoric predator with two large teeth in its mouth that can be called a "saber-toothed tiger". In general, animals that can be called "saber-toothed tigers" need to belong at least to the subfamily machairodontinae of the carnivorous cat family (felidae), while the narrowest saber-toothed tiger includes only a few species under the genus machairodus, the most representative of which is the machairodus aphanistus. For the sake of making it easier to distinguish, these true saber-toothed tigers are sometimes referred to as short saber-toothed tigers in Chinese readings.
Fossils of the genus Saber-toothed tiger were discovered by Europeans as early as the nineteenth century, but because they were too fragmented, paleontologists did not know much about them at first, and it was not until the late twentieth century that nearly complete saber-toothed tiger skeletons were found in some naturally formed predator traps, and people began to become truly familiar with the animal.
Perhaps contrary to what many people think, real saber-toothed tigers do not have highly specialized body structures, and in general they are a more conservative and moderate category in the overall saber-toothed tiger subfamily. An adult occult saber-toothed tiger usually weighs about 200-220 kilograms, which is actually about the same size as Holocene tigers; saber-toothed tigers differ from tigers in appearance in their narrower skulls and cervical vertebrae, as well as their shorter tails.
Although the saber-toothed tiger is named after the "saber-toothed tiger", the length of the saber-toothed tiger's upper canine teeth is not particularly exaggerated compared to the "saber-toothed tiger" that evolved to its final form, and it is not particularly exaggerated compared to the cat hunting and the Babo saber-toothed tiger family before it. Moreover, the saber-toothed tiger does not have a jawbone that can open a particularly large angle, so it is not at all better than its own offspring in terms of the efficiency of using saber teeth.
The comprehensive quality of saber-toothed tigers in all aspects is not particularly outstanding in the entire saber-toothed tiger subfamily, but it turns out that their body structure is quite successful, otherwise they would never have lived from the middle of the Miocene to the early Pleistocene, and in fact, the early Pleistocene should not be regarded as the end of the saber-toothed tiger, because the more advanced offspring of the serrated tiger (homotherium) that diverged during the long process of evolution survived until the eve of human civilization.