Smilodon populator

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Smilodon populator

jrocks

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#165

05-18-2022, 01:50 AM

(05-17-2022, 10:01 PM)LonePredator Wrote:
(05-17-2022, 09:28 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:
(05-17-2022, 08:59 PM)LonePredator Wrote: That specimen with 408cm skull was the one which was considered the heaviest Populator specimen, am I correct? Wasn’t his weight estimated at just over 400kg?

So with what we have, is that 400kg weight the highest estimated weight for Smilodon Populator till now? Or is there any heavier estimated specimen?

In fact, no weight estimation exist for the skull of 408 mm at this moment. The large skull from Uruguay MNHN-P 957 is the one that was estimated at 436 kg with a GSL of 392 mm, so "Smilodon bonaërensis 10-1" was probably bigger and heavier.

About the estimations, it depends of the formula and method, as the biggest estimation at this moment is of 517 kg (check one of the previous images that I posted for details), but if we use only the information from Christiansen & Harris (2005) the heaviest one used by them is of 358.4 kg "weighted" and came from specimen MLP10-13 (Humerus of 387.5 mm), but the authors stated that bigger specimens, like the one in Paris were heavier and could reach 400 kg. Now we can see that even "Smilodon bonaërensis - 46" had a bigger humerus than MLP10-13, which suggest a bigger body mass, and as MNHN-P 957 and "Smilodon bonaërensis 10-1" are even bigger than both of them, the figure or 400 kg could be clearly surpassed by the biggest specimens of Smilodon populator.

By the way, I tried to search information about the specimen in Paris, but sadly I could not found anything, yet......

Yes, the 517kg weight must be treated with extreme caution because estimating the weight of Smilodon Populator is no easy task, we have no living animal which has the same or similar proportions as Smilodon Populators unlike in the case of prehistoric Lions and Tigers which are much more easier to estimate as animals with similar or almost same proportions as them still exist.

Now for this reason, the method used would make or break the whole estimation. And since the method of Christiansen and Harris (2005) is considered the most reliable, we could have used their 358.4kg specimen as surrogate to make a rough isometric estimation for these specimens but the problem is that the 358.4kg specimen was based on the humerus so isometric scaling can only be done on another humerus.

Unfortunately we only have skulls on our hands and it would not be possible to estimate their weight unless we get our hands on the original method of Christiansen and Harris and see how it works and how it could apply in this case if it really can.

i think when i was looking for the sources for the comment guate asked me on earlier, there was some study that said that the christiansen and harris 2005 formula did something that underestimated the smilodon specimens they estimated i think because of the bone width although im not sure, if i find the link to that study il edit it in here