Reuters AlertNet Lite - Ice Age sabretooth was a pussy cat-report

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Ice Age sabretooth was a pussy cat-report

04 Oct 2007 06:02:30 GMT
Source: Reuters

SYDNEY, Oct 4 (Reuters) - The Ice Age sabretooth, with its large protruding fangs, was actually a bit of a pussycat, according to Australian scientists who studied the power of its bite and hunting skills.

While most people rank the sabretooth alongside the Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur as a killing machine, in reality today's lions are far more powerful, the study found.

Using the skull of a modern-day lion for comparison, a team of scientists at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) found the sabretooth had a relatively weak bite.

In fact, its bite was about one third as powerful as a lion.

"For all its reputation, Smilodon had a wimpy bite," UNSW palaeontologist Steve Wroe said in a statement. Smilodon is the name for the extinct genus of sabretoothed cats.

"It's a bit like a moggy," he said, using the slang for cat.

Scientists from UNSW and the University of Newcastle used a computer-based technique called Finite Element Analysis to test the bite force and feeding mechanics of the sabretooth, which preyed on giant bison, horse and perhaps mammoths and mastodons.

The analysis is normally used to study transport crashes, but allowed the scientists to reverse engineer a 3D-model image of a Smilodon skull to find out what sort of forces it could handle.

The team found that under most conditions, the sabretooth's skull performed very poorly compared to that of a lion.

The scientists said this would have seriously limited the big cat to a very specific range of killing behaviours, but it was still a formidable predator.

"Smilodon was an awesome beast and what it lacked in bite force it more than made up for elsewhere," said Wroe.

The sabretooth had an immensely powerful body, perfect for wrestling large prey to the ground, which it did before trying to inflict a killing bite, said the study published in the U.S. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science this week.

"Killing was more likely applied to the prey's throat, because it is easier to restrain the prey this way. Once the bite was done the prey would have died almost instantly," said Colin McHenry, from Newcastle university.

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Last updated:Thu Oct 4 06:02:14 2007