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Coyote story

Extinction means things die, animals die and then they make a different type that is a little bit like the original. For example the mammoth changed into the elephant. Some things stayed the same and some things changed. The animals die because of the weather, it's either too hot or too cold for them. Also there are more people in the world and not enough places for the animals. The smaller amount of places means there is not enough food, so animals had to die. Also, maybe the water got poisonous, or something changed and there was not enough water for the animals. This is why the elephant doesn't need as much water. The saber tooth tiger was replaced by the tiger. If saber tooth tigers were still here then there wouldn't be any tigers. Our world seems to have more kinds of animals in it because if there were still saber tooth tigers then there would be no tigers and we have lots of tigers. A crocodile is a dinosaur that transformed its bones to live in our world.

Lucio asks: I have been studying the saber tooth tiger and I want to know which kind of animals did it eat? I think it's similar to the tiger except it's lost it's big teeth. Is this true?

Sean Bell replies: That's a tricky question to answer. I'll assume you're asking about the best-known sabre-tooth cat (remember, they are not related to tigers) that we call Smilodon. It's hard to know exactly what they ate, since it depends a lot on where Smilodon lived--they ranged throughout the Americas, but the prey species were very different in many respects. But to answer the question the short way, Smilodon (and most large "cats") would probably have eaten medium-sized to large hoofed animals like deer, pronghorn-relatives, horses, and a wide variety of animals that are now extinct, especially in South America where most of those herbivore groups are completely extinct.

On the other hand, some of the sabre-tooth animals are thought to have preyed on elephants (the babies, anyway). We think this because the fossils of a different sabre-tooth species called Homotherium have been found in caves mixed with chewed-on elephant (and other animal) bones.

Except for a general similarity to a tiger, Smilodon and other sabre-tooths actually looked very different and were not very closely related to modern cats. The over-sized canines indicate that they were a lineage in the cat family that became extremely specialized. As far as we know, they were probably much stockier due to heavier muscles around the neck and different muscles for a different killing method, and were probably slower too. Being slower probably contributed to the extinctions of the sabre-tooth lineages. They evolved to capture relatively slower animals, probably ambushing from cover in treed areas. When grasslands and savannahs became more common, hoofed animals became faster and more agile. Slow hunters were at a big disadvantage without their ambush cover compared to much faster or better equipped hunters, and so their genes were not passed on into new generations as consistently (this is the major principal of Natural Selection). An extreme example of the faster hunters is the modern cheetah (which is also extremely specialized) as well as several similar (but extinct) high-speed hunters from the cat and hyena families. And there is hope for sabre-tooths—the modern clouded leopard, a true cat, has the longest upper canines relative to body size of any living cat. The sabre-tooth design could arise again (it has several times so far).

If you are really interested in the big cats, sabre-toothed or not, I would HIGHLY recommend a book called Big Cats and Their Fossil Relatives. Some of it gets technical, but with a little help from dictionaries and parents, it should be understandable, especially the parts about how these animals fit into the cat family. Try to get it at a library, but if you can't the paperback isn't too expensive (less than $25) and well worth it--amazing art work too!

Lucio asks: When there dinosoars how big were the plants?