Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[GuateGojira]

I was thinking about our perspective about how massive was Smilodon and it came to my mind the beautifull reconstructions of Mauricio Anton, like this one of Smilodon fatalis:

*This image is copyright of its original author

The image is beautiful and it shows how powerfull and majestic this animal was, however it keep the basic proportions of the modern Panthera cats and if you chose a modern cat like this tiger and lion:

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

We can see that there is not to much difference and that is not what the bones suggest.

Smilodon, both fatalis and populator, were cats that did not look like cats, they look more like bears in some points, so they probably look more compact, massive and less gracil. I found this reconstruction from "Tio Joako" and "Palaeos" and it shows this morphology:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Yes, I know that is not as pretty as the other one, but independently of how beautifull are the images of Anton, his Smilodon looks too gracile, to Panthera, so even his Smilodon populator do not look as massive as should be:

*This image is copyright of its original author

So, we need to remember that while Smilodon was a felid, its morphology was different from modern cats and even at similar sizes, they weighed significantly more. Again, for example, Smilodon fatalis barely reached the size of an average sized modern lion, but weighed more than the biggest modern tiger recorded, that suggest to us how massive was his southern brother. In this case, S. populator could look like this (made by "DiBgd"):

*This image is copyright of its original author

A massive brute, heavy and not particularly fast but strong enoght to fight with megabeasts in the Pleistocene. Reply