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THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



Almost all the fossil Cats belong to a division now extinct, 

 in which the upper canine teeth were enlarged into great curving, 

 flattened, sharp-edged tusks, sometimes seven inches long. 



Smilodon of the Pleistocene epoch was as large as a polar 

 bear, and exceedingly muscular, especially in the great massive 

 fore-limbs. The claws in the mounted skeleton (upright case) 

 are larger than the largest lion claws. One of the great tusks 

 is complete, the other was broken off during the lifetime of the 





--.A-'^' 



3*S7BS^'— ' 



F,Q. 18. THE GREAT SARBE-TOOTH TIGER, SMILODON 

 Pleistocene of South America. Restoration by Wolff. Courtesy of Dr. Elliott 



animal, for the stump shows evidence of considerable wear after 

 it was broken. This skeleton was found near Buenos Aires in 

 Argentina along with the remains of gigantic ground-sloths 

 (MegatJicn'iiiu) and tortoise-armadillos ((jlyt>todo>i) which may 

 well have been the prey of this most terrible of all the Caniivora. 

 But the Smilodons ranged all over the New World, and like the 

 nearly allied Maclucrodus, which was distributed over all the 

 northern continents, were contemporaries of primitive man. 

 Whether our palaeolithic ancestors ventured to contend with this 

 gigantic foe, we do not know, but the structure of its skeleton 

 indicates that, although more powerful than the lion and the 



