When Did Sabretooth Cats Go Extinct?

The sabretooth cat is an extinct mammal that roamed the land thousands of years ago. There are three types of sabretooth cats in the Smilodon genus, but all of them are extinct. When did sabretooth cats go extinct?

While an image of this formidable animal comes into our imagination when its name is mentioned, that doesn’t mean it looked like that. Because we only have fossilized remains, their exact appearance is unknown. They probably came in a variety of colors depending on how they interacted with their environment and when they hunted.

What are some other interesting facts about sabretooth cats? Why aren’t sabretooth cats still around? When did sabretooth cats go extinct? Let’s find out!

When Did Sabretooth Cats Go Extinct?

The sabretooth cat went extinct about 10,000-12,000 years ago during the Quaternary extinction at the end of the late Pleistocene period when the last Ice Age ended.

Megafauna around the planet disappeared at this time along with the sabretooth cat. There are various theories about why this happened, but no one is certain. We do know that animals don’t just go extinct because they’re done being animals. Something caused this extinction.

Why Did Sabretooth Cats Go Extinct?

Sabretooth cats went extinct because humans overhunted them at the same time that climate change was occurring. They also lost access to easy food in the form of megafauna. We know from the teeth of fossilized sabretooth cats and megafauna that they hunted in packs to take down these large animals.

There is evidence food shortages weren’t the only contributing factor to extinction. The fossilized remains of some sabretooth cats were studied and their teeth over time showed no extra wear. This means that the animals didn’t start gnawing off every morsel of meat in desperation toward the end of their existence.

Animals that are desperate for a meal leave behind fossils with more worn teeth than well-fed predecessors. Since no differentiation in wear exists in the sabretooth cat fossil record, it may be safe to assume that they ate well until the end.

These animals were adapted to cold weather but they reacted very poorly to the rapidly increasing global temperatures at the end of the last Ice Age. It may have only taken 100 years of rising temperatures to wipe sabretooth cats off of the face of the planet.

What Did Sabretooth Cats Eat?

Sabretooth cats were apex predators that ate large mammals. Even huge beasts like the mastodon were considered fair game.

They chowed down on woolly mammoths, mastodons, giant sloths, caribou, elk, oxen, camels, bison, and other big animals. These cats were huge so it took a sizeable amount of meat to keep them going. They weighed up to 750 lbs., were three feet tall, and 5.5 feet long.

When megafauna went extinct, it greatly affected sabretooth cats and aided in their demise.

Why Are They Called Sabretooth Cats?

Sabretooth cats earned their name because they had two huge canine teeth in their upper jaw. These giant teeth grew up to seven inches long. A sabretooth cat’s jaw was huge so that it could accommodate them.

These canine teeth gave them the ability to inflict devastatingly precise bites. Combined with their powerful jaw that opened much farther than any modern cat, they were able to crush or mortally wound their prey with one bite.  

Where Did Sabretooth Cats Live?

Sabretooth cats lived near their food in grasslands, forests, and shrublands. Their range covered all of the Americas from the tip of South America through much of North America as well as much of Europe. Their ranges almost always included some kind of permanent water source and plenty of hiding spots.

The first sabretooth cat fossil was found in Brazil in the early 1800s. Sabretooth cats are not the only sabretooth cat to go extinct but they’re the most widely distributed. While not all sabretooth cats existed in the sabretooth cat’s range, many different species of big cats lived in overlapping territories.

Sabretooth Cats in Los Angeles

The La Brea tarpits in Los Angeles, California, played host to hundreds of thousands of fossilized sabretooth cats. These cats are the second most harvested fossil at this site. They fell into the pits when they tried to hunt animals that were already stuck in the tar.

The sabretooth cats extracted from the La Brea tarpits in Los Angeles constitute the largest single collection of these cats on earth. A large number of other extinct cats and dire wolves were also recovered.

The word “brea” means tar in Spanish. Early settlers and the indigenous community in the area used the tar for a variety of purposes like roofing. The tar pits were also used as a source of oil.

An early name for the La Brea tarpits was “la huesomenta,” or boneyard. These bones were believed to be that of cattle and modern animals until they were analyzed. People knew that the tar pits contained a lot of bones, but no one knew they were ancient until the 1900s.

Are Sabretooth Cats Like Modern Cats?

No, sabretooth cats are not like modern cats. They are also not related to modern cats and are most closely related to modern clouded leopards since they share a related skull shape. While they’re big cats, they aren’t a lot like any of the cats still left on earth.

Sabretooth cats hunted in packs as evidenced by their fossils. Broken bones were allowed to heal while the animal was alive. This suggests that groups of cats allowed injured members of their group to feed.

They were around the size of a modern lion but they roared much louder than one. Lions do hunt in packs, and some scientists imagine that the hunting patterns of sabretooth cats vaguely imitated their behavior. Sabretooth cats were heavier and shorter than modern lions.

Modern cats are agile and stalk their prey whereas sabretooth cats were ambush predators that were more stocky. They simply weren’t as adapted for chasing down their meal.

Instead, they struck out at their prey when the timing was right. They used their long upper canine teeth to slash their throats or cause other fatal damage. Then they would wait for their victim to bleed out before consuming them. 

Sabretooth Cat Reproduction, Babies, and Lifespan

Researchers believe it’s likely that sabretooth cats were seasonally polyestrous. Meaning, the female could go into heat more than once during the spring breeding season. Every year, every fertile female would become pregnant by the dominant male she accepted. The males would battle each other for mating rights. The gestation period for a baby sabretooth cat was eight months. A typical litter of cubs was three.

A sabretooth cat had a lifespan ranging from twenty to forty years if it did not encounter human hunters.