Sabre-toothed cats may have used their fearsome canine teeth to bite their rivals in the head, puncturing their skulls and probably killing them. This seems to be the best explanation for two separate sabre-toothed cat skulls sporting tooth-shaped holes.
The long-toothed cats roamed the world for over 40 million years before the last ones vanished 11,000 years ago. Although the canine teeth are dramatic, some palaeontologists think they were largely for show. They are so long and narrow, the argument goes, they must have been fragile and would have broken if used to bite into bone.
鈥淥thers even suggested that they were useless for hunting and only served for exhibiting to females,鈥� says Federico Agnolin of the Bernardino Rivadavia Natural Sciences Argentine Museum in Buenos Aires.
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Agnolin and his colleagues studied two skulls of Smilodon populator, one of the best known species, discovered at separate sites in Argentina. Both skulls have holes, shaped like pointy ovals, near where the forehead meets the nose. It looks like the wounds were inflicted by the famous teeth. 鈥淭he shape and the size of the holes are identical,鈥� says Agnolin.
To confirm this, the team took a third sabre-toothed cat skull and inserted its canines into the holes on each of the other skills. 鈥淭he canines of the specimen entered perfectly through the holes, matching the shape and size,鈥� says Agnolin.
The team says the best explanation for each skull is that the wounds were inflicted by 聽another sabre-toothed cat during a fight. In both cases, this was probably fatal, says Agnolin. It is conceivable that the cats were actually kicked in the head by hoofed prey, but he says that would make different-shaped holes.
The study also adds to the evidence that sabre-toothed cats had a social side: the fight may have been over females or dominance within a pack. However, Agnolin remains cautious. 鈥淲e really do not know which kind of sociability Smilodon 丑补诲.鈥�
Comptes Rendus Palevol
