Extinct cats – YLoveBigCats https://www.ylovebigcats.com/en Big cats from the world,<br>a world of big cats Fri, 09 Sep 2016 15:15:36 +0000 en-US hourly 1 The Giant American Cheetah was not fast, but powerful https://www.ylovebigcats.com/en/2016/09/09/the-giant-american-cheetah-was-not-fast-but-powerful/ Fri, 09 Sep 2016 15:15:36 +0000 https://ylovebigcats.com/en/?p=1002 You certainly heard about the American Cheetah, this long-lost fossil of a cheetah which was living in North America up to about three million years ago. While the term calls images of a slender speeding cat, it seems that this was more a Giant Cheetah than a Cheetah.

The Miracinonix genus was made of two species (as far as we know today) which appear to have been at least twice as big as current African cheetahs and as large as an American cougar or mountain lion. And they were probably not as slender and not as fast as those current cats.

But a Sorbonne University paleontologist, Denis Geraads, also analyzed the structure of the fossil craniums and compared it to the common cheetah cranium (see his paper). He concludes that the giant cheetah had jaws so much more powerful that they had probably a different kill strategy. The African cheetah is not very powerful so it relies on a kiss-of-death solution (holding/strangling its victim neck until it dies from asphyxation), while the Miracinonix was probably strong enough to crush through a skull (or break its victim’s neck).

Cheetah skulls

]]> Keep your sabertooth cat filet fresh https://www.ylovebigcats.com/en/2011/06/22/keep-your-sabertooth-cat-filet-fresh/ Wed, 22 Jun 2011 13:28:53 +0000 https://ylovebigcats.com/en/?p=729 When Bosch German refrigerators want to demonstrate their long-term reliability, they keep meat for a very very very long time: Sabertooth cat filet dates back a few million years.

Sabertooth cat filet
Bosch refrigerators keep meat fresh for millions of years

Anyway, didn’t the filet went beyond the expiry date?

]]> Anatomy: The grip of the Saber-Toothed Cat https://www.ylovebigcats.com/en/2009/09/24/anatomy-the-grip-of-the-saber-toothed-cat/ Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:56:27 +0000 https://ylovebigcats.com/en/?p=464 Some believe that the Saber-Toothed Cats, impressive prehistoric big cats disappeared long ago, went extinct because the evolution of their canines too such length that they no longer could hunt, bite and eat. It’s really wrong; The animal had an astonishing capacity to crack his mouth wide-open, giving it a strong hook to catch a prey, as you can see in the following animation which allows a comparison with the modern lion anatomy:

All the details on Saber-Toothed Cats anatomy are on HowStuffWorks.

]]> How to draw a saber-tooth cat https://www.ylovebigcats.com/en/2009/06/18/how-to-draw-a-saber-tooth-cat/ Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:12:33 +0000 https://ylovebigcats.com/en/?p=350 If you love saber-tooth cats, if you love drawing, if you want to associated both, it’s time you visit the DragoArt.com web site. They have a nice tutorial on how to draw one of these extinct big cats.

how-to-draw-a-saber-tooth-tiger-step-3
Draw a saber tooth tiger

You will learn to draw in step by step construction, the Saber Tooth Tiger from the movie called 10.000 B.C.

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