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Smilodon populator
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 (04-01-2022, 09:56 PM)genao87 Wrote: do you have a table or images of the different sizes of Saber Tooth cats like you did with Tigers? Not yet, sorry, but this comparative image (not my best, sorry  ) can give you an idea of a correct comparison between these species: *This image is copyright of its original author In the image you can see the maximum sized Smilodon populator (220 X 129 cm) against the maximum sized Bengal tiger (220 X 114 cm). In body mass, the tiger may be about 290 kg "emtpy" (based in the record of Smythies in Nepal, adjuted for stomach content) while S. populator certainly reach the 400 kg. A comparison on the skull department (not showed here), the Smilodon is of 392 mm while the tiger is of 383 mm.  (04-01-2022, 09:29 AM)tigerluver Wrote:(04-01-2022, 08:49 AM)jrocks Wrote:(03-31-2022, 08:06 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:(03-31-2022, 10:17 AM)tigerluver Wrote: Mendez-Alzola reported an ever larger skull of length 408.4 mm. oh wow, does that mean an even bigger populator beat up this giant 392 mm uruguay specimen  (04-01-2022, 08:25 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:(04-01-2022, 10:07 AM)Jerricson Wrote: If i recall properly, in ur previous weight table, avg south african lion was 191kg. So did u update ur weight tables?? If so ,can u share it? It will be helpful oh nice. I am awaiting your post regarding that (04-02-2022, 08:53 AM)jrocks Wrote:(04-01-2022, 09:29 AM)tigerluver Wrote:(04-01-2022, 08:49 AM)jrocks Wrote:(03-31-2022, 08:06 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:(03-31-2022, 10:17 AM)tigerluver Wrote: Mendez-Alzola reported an ever larger skull of length 408.4 mm. They certainly had deadly battles. It seems that the saber teeth canines were not as weak as I thought. A potential battle had occurred in the image below, which is believed that one Smilidon P. killed the other by piercing its skull with its teeth. The attacker might of gotten his tooth broken but I never thought that the sabers could penetrate the skull https://www.reddit.com/r/Naturewasmetal/...h_america/ https://www.sciencenews.org/article/foss...als-skulls  *This image is copyright of its original author
(04-01-2022, 10:22 PM)GuateGojira Wrote:(04-01-2022, 09:56 PM)genao87 Wrote: do you have a table or images of the different sizes of Saber Tooth cats like you did with Tigers? Despite the size difference, the Tiger seems to have a bigger head/skull! Tigerluver wasn't kidding that the skull of Smilidon Populator is small for its body size. 
The most interesting thing regards the alleged 408.4mm Smilodon skull.
Isometric scaling a Smilodon with the proportions of the 392 mm skull Uruguayan male with a GDI of 433.93 kg to a specimen with a 408.4mm skull you get around 490 kg. Now imagine the idea that a Smilodon close to the 500 kg benchmark is possible, this would be astonishing! (04-02-2022, 11:02 PM)LoveAnimals Wrote: The most interesting thing regards the alleged 408.4mm Smilodon skull. holy snap thats crazy lmao 
The link with the "Animal art" thread doesn't work. I don't know why...
Smilodon populator: I haven't enough emphasized the dorsal inclination from the shoulders to the tail. It will be for a next time.  *This image is copyright of its original author
Book, Smilodon: the iconic sabertooth.
Wroe (2008) suggestes that Smilodon lumbar vertebrae are ursid-like in being shorter craniocaudally than most felids, but still have transverse processes oriented in the matter of felids, giving them BETTER ACCELERATION AND LESS STABILITY THAN URSIDS.  *This image is copyright of its original author https://books.google.com.au/books?id=fmBVDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT297&dq=Ursids+are+superior+than+felids&hl=en&sa=X&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=Ursids%20are%20superior%20than%20felids&f=false I know there is data which says a smilodon has more robust limbs at parity. However, this might only apply when comparing smilodons with younger brown bears up to six to eight years old. Brown bears at nine years old are fully grown and more robust than their own kind at six years old. Smilodons reach their probably from 5 to 7 years old like modern days big cats.
Saber-toothed kittens may have been born with thicker bones than other contemporary cats.
 *This image is copyright of its original author Growth series of juvenile limb bones of Smilodon fatalis, showing the dramatic transformation in size and shape during ontogeny. Credit: Long K (2017) Saber-toothed kittens may have been born with thicker bones compared to other contemporary cats, but they have a similar pattern of bone development, according to a study published September 27, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Katherine Long from California State Polytechnic University, USA and colleagues. Saber-toothed cats (Smilodon fatalis) from the Pleistocene (37,000 to 9,000 years ago) have been previously recognized as having more robust skeletons compared to other wild cats. However, how and when saber-toothed cats developed these strong bones is a mystery. To better understand the growth of Smilodon bones in comparison to a similar species, Long and colleagues measured and analyzed hundreds of bones at various stages of development from both Smilodon and the contemporary tiger-sized cat Panthera atrox in the La Brea Tar Pits museum. The researchers found that while Smilodon bones were more robust than the Panthera bones, they did not increase in robustness with age as expected, but were born with more robust bones to begin with. They found that the growth of Smilodon bones followed a similar pattern to other primitive cat species, where the bones actually grow longer and more slender than they grow thick. This finding suggests that the growth and development of feline species is more tightly constrained than previously thought, even with species with very different bone structures. "Saber-tooth cats had extraordinarily strong front limbs for tackling and subduing prey before they slashed their throats or bellies with their saber-like canine teeth," says co-author Don Prothero. "Using the extraordinary collection of limb bones of saber-tooth kittens at La Brea tar pits, we found that their limbs don't become more robust as they grew up, but instead retain the stereotypical growth pattern where the limbs grow longer more quickly than they grow thick. To compensate, saber-tooth kittens were born with unusually robust limbs and retained that pattern as they grew." https://phys.org/news/2017-09-saber-toot...T0RXD7gpD8
Also does anyone know how aggressive a smilodon would be?
Male sabertoothed cats were pussycats compared to macho lions.  *This image is copyright of its original author Close up view of a saber tooth cat head on display at the American Natural History Museum, New York. Image: Wikipedia. Despite their fearsome fangs, male sabertoothed cats may have been less aggressive than many of their feline cousins, says a new study of male-female size differences in extinct big cats. Commonly called the sabertoothed tiger, Smilodon fatalis was a large predatory cat that roamed North and South America about 1.6 million to 10,000 years ago, when there was also a prehistoric cat called the American lion. A study appearing in the November 5 issue of the Journal of Zoology examined size differences between sexes of these fearsome felines using subtle clues from bones and teeth. The researchers report that while male American lions were considerably larger than females, male and female sabertoothed cats were indistinguishable in size. The findings suggest that sabertooths may have been less aggressive than their fellow felines, researchers say. In species where males fight for mates, bigger, heavier males have a better chance of winning fights, fending off their rivals and gaining access to females. After generations of male-male competition, the males of some species evolve to be much larger than their mates. Most big cats have a form of sexual dimorphism where males are bigger than females, said co-author Julie Meachen-Samuels, a biologist at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center in Durham, NC. So she and Wendy Binder of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles wanted to know if extinct sabertooths and American lions showed the same size patterns as big cats living today. When it comes to fossils, sorting males from females can be tricky. "It's hard to tell who's a male and who's a female in the fossil record," said Blaire Van Valkenburgh, a biologist at UCLA who has studied these animals extensively but was not an author on the paper. "Unless you're lucky enough to get some DNA, or you're working with an animal where males have horns and females don't." For species that keep growing into adulthood, simply separating the fossils into two groups by size may not do the trick, either. "It's easy to get a younger, smaller male confused with an older, larger female if you're just dividing them by size," Meachen-Samuels said. The researchers accounted for continued growth using subtle clues from fossilized teeth. "Teeth fill in over time," said Binder. "In young animals the tooth cavity is basically hollow, but as they get older it fills in with dentin. It won't give you an exact age, but it can give you a relative age in terms of young, middle aged or old," Binder added. Meachen-Samuels and Binder x-rayed the lower teeth and jaws of 13 American lions and 19 sabertoothed cats recovered from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles. To account for growth over time, they measured tooth cavity diameter and plotted it against jaw length for each species. Plotted this way, the data for the American lion fell easily into two groups, regardless of age. The researchers concluded that "the little ones were females and the big ones were males," said Van Valkenburgh. In contrast, sabertoothed cat sizes seemed to be governed solely by age. It would appear that the males were indistinguishable from their mates. "Even by incorporating a measure of age, you can't distinguish males and females," said Meachen-Samuels. Size differences between the sexes tend to be more impressive in species where male aggression is more intense, and in the extinct American lion, size differences between the sexes were even more dramatic than in lions living today. The closest living relative of the American lion, "African lions engage in aggressive takeovers where one to several males will take over an entire pride - the males have battles to the death," said Van Valkenburgh. "Living lions have huge sexual dimorphism," said Meachen-Samuels. Based on their findings, the researchers think the American lion probably lived in male-dominated groups, where 1-2 males monopolized and mated with multiple females. "My guess would be that the American lion was similar to African lions, where males guard groups of females," said Meachen-Samuels. "But we don't see that in the sabertoothed cat," Binder said. The size similarity in sabertoothed cats suggests that male sabertooths may have been less aggressive than their larger cousins. "Rather than males having harems of females, the males and females in a group might have been more equal," Binder said. More information: Meachen-Samuels, J. and W. Binder (2009). "Sexual Dimorphism and Ontogenetic Growth in the American Lion (Panthera atrox) and Sabertoothed Cat (Smilodon fatalis) from Rancho La Brea." Journal of Zoology. Source: Duke University (news : web) https://phys.org/news/2009-11-male-sabertoothed-cats-pussycats-macho.html From Carnivora. https://carnivora.net/siberian-tiger-v-smilodon-fatalis-female-t10344.html#p193586 Food for thought, animals with greater sexual dimorphism seems to be more aggressive in general.
@GreenGrolar
About #104: Interesting account but not a new one ! I remember having read it several years ago. The sexual dimorphism among extant felids is never as prominent as in the lions case. Perhaps, because only lions are the only ones felids living in prides, in important prides should I add. But the relationships between members of the pride can be very rough, expecially if we compare with other social predators like wolves, spotted hyenas, whose clans are often leaded by a dominant female. Thus in the case of these latters, we cannot say the "machismo" exists. Or is it an inverted machism ? Although it does not seem like it, the extant lions are perhaps the only one social predator among which, inside the prides, the males are the dominant elements. Correct me if I'm wrong. Are the lions male very macho because they have to take over some previous males in order to conquer the pride and to rule over it during 2 or 3 years in average ? And because of that their times are counted ? Their times to make the females pregnant and to sire a new line, their line. We can suppose the "machismo" is never so clear as in the African lion case. Perhaps we can compare the extinct Panthera Athrox with the extant Asiatic lion living in small groups, the males at one side, the female at the other side. And when the females are in oestrus... The males come ! As concerns the smilodons, perhaps they aren't different from the extant tigers leopards and so on. Perhaps because of that too, African lions are unique among predators.
About #104:
I confess not to have read " Size differences between the sexes tend to be more impressive in species where male aggression is more intense, and in the extinct American lion, size differences between the sexes were even more dramatic than in lions living today. " I understood "sexual dimorphism" in African lions, not only the size difference between males and females but also the presence of the male's mane. But the account seems to be essentially focused on the size difference between males and females (logical if we consider the case of an extinct specy). That being said, I didn't believe that the size difference between sexes was greater among lions than among tigers. Thus, are tigers especially macho too ? Tigers are solitary animals but the males don't seem to be as rough towards females as in the case of lions. |
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