True sabre-toothed cats appear
The machairodont felids evolve the blade-toothed design for the third time in mammal history.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 9.7 million years
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Miocene, Cenozoic
Machairodonts — the true sabre-toothed cats — appear in the middle Miocene with Machairodus and its relatives, independently reinventing the elongated blade-like upper canine already produced by nimravids and, in South America, by marsupials. The tooth is fragile in bending, which constrains how it can be used: the current consensus is a precise killing bite to the throat of restrained prey rather than a slashing attack. The lineage runs for 15 million years and ends with Smilodon.