Perhaps the very most remarkable group of animals found in 

 the brea beds is that of the cats. The representatives found here 

 are the great American lion and the saber-tooth tigers. The former 

 is remarkable for its rarity, while the latter is wonderful in its 

 abundance. In the collection so far made, more than fifty per cent 

 of the mammal individuals are the tigers. 



To date as many as fifty individuals have been represented by 

 skulls and other parts. In every digging their bones are found, and 

 eight skulls beside many other bones were excavated in one single 

 cubic yard of earth. This tiger is the chief representative of a 

 group of the cat family in which the upper canine teeth have shown 

 a tendency to elongation, and of all cats of all times and of all 

 places, this one was the strongest and most highly specialized. This 

 specialization is in the sabers which extend below the jaw in some 

 cases as much as seven inches. These canines develop through many 

 generations into long thin, strongly recurved, saber-like teeth, with 

 a sharp cutting edge fore and aft. Figure 5. 



Figure 5. 



The cat family presents three great groups in its past history 

 and each group lias its saber-tooth, but in none did the development 

 proceed so far as in the true cats where our marvelous form of the 

 Brea occurs. The earliest known cats appear in the Eocene of France, 

 while in America they appear first in the Miocene of Nebraska and 

 Colorado. Following these, were the false saber-tooths of middle and 

 upper Miocene of Oregon, one of which was about the size of a 

 panther and had a saber, but this was very weak and thin laterally 

 and lacked the serrated edges. 



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