Baby Mammoths Were Meals for These Saber-Tooth Cats

Fossils from a Texas site suggest that the predatory felines not only snatched mammoths from their herds, but dragged the remains back to their cave.

On a landscape that would one day become a suburb of San Antonio, paleontologists paint a picture that is as bloody as it is fascinating. Mammoths were stalked by predatory cats with scimitar teeth protruding from their jaws. The cats would snatch a juvenile mammoth, blood staining the fur around their mouths and claws as it soaked into the grasses around them. Having eaten their fill, they would take the carcass back to their den. This was a meal that could be shared again later. Earlier this month, researchers published a paper in the journal Current Biology providing evidence that supported this scenario. What it also shows is that the cats had a diet unlike any other large cat, extinct or alive today.