THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
skull; while the size and shape of the muscular attachments on the bones 
enable the artist to reconstruct the muscles of the body with a fair degree 
of exactness. Even the coloring is not wholly guesswork, for it is governed 
very largely by the habits and mode of life of the animal, judged by its 
living kindred. 
“The smilodon had short, muscular limbs and broad, padded 
feet, with retractile, catlike claws; but its general appearance 
could not have been 
very catlike, for the 
shape of the head, the 
high shoulders, short, 
deep trunk, and small 
hindquarters were 
much more like a 
hyena. The tail was 
short and stumpy. 
The most noticeable 
peculiarity is the huge, 
saberlike, upper ca- 
HEAD OF SMILODON, 
Outline restoration drawn by Charles R. Knight. (By MNC teeth. 
permission of the American Museum of Natural 
“The modern great 
History.) e mode are 
cats kill their prey 
usually by biting it in the neck so as to break the spinal column. 
They pursue as a rule the long-necked, thin-skinned ruminants, 
Sees which are the most abundant herbivores of to-day, 
ot ies seldom molesting the short-necked, thick-skinned 
pachyderms such as the rhinoceros and the elephant. 
The saber-tooth appears to have used his great canine fangs in a 
quite different method of attack; the whole structure of the 
animal indicates that he struck them forcibly into the side of 
his prey, the mouth gaping wide meanwhile, and then pre- 
sumably withdrew them with a ripping, tearing stroke, leaving 
a great gash whereby a large animal would soon bleed to death. 
The whole head is adapted to such a method of killing. The 
88 
