Identifier: scienceguide1630amer (find matches)
Title: Guide leaflet
Year: 1901 (1900s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: American Museum of Natural History Natural history
Publisher: New York : The Museum
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: IMLS / LSTA / METRO

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......_ V _. . y ,-., ; .- v - l Sabre-Tooth mounted skelet - tiodom and .: skeleton of I • Hoptopkcmeus. Di». W- turns. 24 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL Almost all the fossil Cats belong to a division now extinct,in which the upper canine teeth were enlarged into great curving,flattened, sharp-edged tusks, sometimes seven inches long. Smilodon of the Pleistocene epoch was as large as a polarbear, and exceedingly muscular, especially in the great massivefore-limbs. The claws in the mounted skeleton (upright case)are larger than the largest lion claws. One of the great tusksis complete, the other was broken off during the lifetime of the
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F.G. 18. THE GREAT SARBE-TOOTH TIGER, SMILODONPleistocene of South America. Restoration by Wolff. Courtesy of Dr. Elliott animal, for the stump shows evidence of considerable wear afterit was broken. This skeleton was found near Buenos Aires inArgentina along with the remains of gigantic ground-sloths(Megatherium) and tortoise-armadillos (Glyptodon) which maywell have been the prey of this most terrible of alltheCarnivora.But the Smilodons ranged all over the New World, and like thenearly allied Macliccrodus, which was distributed over all thenorthern continents, were contemporaries of primitive man.Whether our palaeolithic ancestors ventured to contend with thisgigantic foe, we do not know, but the structure of its skeletonindicates that, although more powerful than the lion and the FOSSIL CARNIVORA 25 tiger, it was not nearly so active and intelligent, and that it wasfitted to prey upon the slow-moving giant pachyderms of theQuaternary rather than upon active, alert and intelligent

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