On a landscape that would one day become a suburb of San Antonio, palaeontologists paint a picture that is as bloody as it is fascinating.
Mammoths were stalked by predatory cats with scimitar teeth protruding from their jaws. The cats would snatch a juvenile mammoth, blood staining the fur around their mouths and claws as it soaked into the grasses around them. Having eaten their fill, they would take the carcass back to their den. This was a meal that could be shared again later.
Earlier this month, researchers published a paper in the journal Current Biology providing evidence that supported this scenario. What it also shows is that the cats had a diet unlike any other large cat, extinct or alive today.
When most people think of sabre-tooth cats, they think of North America's Smilodon. But they prowled the same terrain as another ferocious but less well-known feline, Homotherium serum, also known as a scimitar cat. While the authors compare Homotherium to a cheetah in some respects, this cat appears to have been built more for long-distance running than sprinting. Its teeth were sharp and coarsely serrated, and its fangs were shorter than Smilodon's iconic fangs. These shorter sabres may have been better at slashing as opposed to stabbing.
"Everything that we looked at basically told us that Smilodon and Homotherium are totally different cats," said Larisa DeSantis, the paper's lead author and a palaeontologist at Vanderbilt University. She adds that although they were more closely related than any cat species living today, "They were able to coexist in these ecosystems likely due to having very different dietary niches."