Metailurus major

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With roughly the body size of a large Leopard and unspecialized morphology, Metailurus major looks like a slightly more evolved version of Pseudaelurus quadridentatus. The skull and dentition of Metailurus major show incipient machairodont features such as moderately long, flattened upper canines, long and narrow premolars, and large carnassials. The animal was known for over seventy years on the basis of cranial and dental remains only (Zdansky 1924) but recently a remarkably complete skeleton was found in Bulgaria, giving us our first glimpse of the body proportions of this sabertooth. The Bulgarian skeleton was described by D. Kovarchev (2001) and classified in a new species, The skeleton of M. major corresponds to an animal larger that a male cougar, but whose proportions overall would be very similar except for longer hind limbs. In contrast, in derived sabertooths like Smilodon and Homotherium, there is shortening of the lower hind limb bones, to a greater or lesses degree.
Book Sabertooth (Mauricio Anton)

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*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

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[epaiva]

Skull of Metailurus major
credit to @palaeocollection

*This image is copyright of its original author

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