Why Did The Saber Tooth Tiger Go Extinct
Camila Farah
![What If Saber Toothed Tigers Didn T Go Extinct Youtube Sabertooth Tiger Smilodon Sabertooth](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/35/0b/6b/350b6b21ab85245b3e370524ee1f0a01.png)
Thylacosmilus is an extinct genus of saber toothed metatherian mammals that inhabited south america from the late miocene to pliocene epochs though thylacosmilus looks similar to the saber toothed cats it was not a felid like the well known north american smilodon but a sparassodont a group closely related to marsupials and only superficially resembled other saber toothed mammals due to.
Smilodon is a genus of the extinct machairodont subfamily of the felids it is one of the most famous prehistoric mammals and the best known saber toothed cat although commonly known as the saber toothed tiger it was not closely related to the tiger or other modern cats. Scientists theorize that environmental change decline in prey population and human activity lead to the death of the saber tooth tiger some 10 000 years ago. Lets discuss each of the three major reasons for why did the saber tooth tiger become extinct. At the time of saber tooth tiger extinction the ice age was ending.
Contrary to what people believed for a long time though saber tooth tigers probably didn t die out because food was scarce. Other researchers suggest that the saber tooth tiger had decent amount of food available to live. The most popular theory that suggests the reasons for the saber tooth tiger extinction talks about the tough times during the late pleistocene period due to climate change human hunting and scarcity of food. However they went extinct as a result of humans hunting them damaging their habitat or climate change.
For a long time it was believed that saber tooth tigers died out because food was scarce. But scientists have now looked at the fossilized teeth from 15 saber toothed tigers and foundthat they lacked the kind of wear pattern. Basically a comet exploded in the air above north america igniting a continent wide forest fire that spelt the end for the hairy mammoth the sabre tooth tiger. After the large herbivores went extinct at the end of the ice age the saber tooth tiger also went extinct due to unavailability of food.
RELATED ARTICLE :
Smilodon lived in the americas during the pleistocene epoch 2 5 mya 10 000 years ago. To make that determination scientists looked at the fossilized teeth from 15 saber toothed tigers and found that they lacked the kind of wear pattern you d expect to see in an animal that isn t getting enough to eat.Source : pinterest.com