Uncovered 16-Inch Saber-Toothed Tiger Skull Reveals Shocking Truth About Their Gigantic Size!
As the New York Times reports, a newly examined skull of a Smilodon populator measured a whopping 16 inches in size, a measurement which effectively dwarfed previously found specimens.
“I thought I was doing something wrong,” said Aldo Manzuetti, a doctoral student in paleontology at Uruguay’s University of the Republic. But after several times analyzing the specimen’s measurements, Manzuetti finally stopped.
“I checked the results a lot of times, and only after doing that I realized I hadn’t made any mistakes,” he said. It was clear that the skull specimen once belonged to an animal that tipped the scales at 960 pounds.
With a body mass of that size, these saber-toothed tigers could have possibly hunted prey that was much larger than them in the South American region which was crawling with giant plant-eating animals. The new findings were detailed by Manzuetti and his team in the journal Alcheringa.
Aldo ManzuettiThe newly identified Smilodon populator skull measured a terrifying 16 inches, making it the largest specimen of S. populator to date.
The first fossils of S. populator were unearthed in a Brazilian cave in 1842. They lived during the Pleistocene era when the South American continent was teeming with other large predators like lions, jaguars, and Arctotherium, the biggest bear ever known. The continent was also inhabited by another smaller species of Smilodon.
The newly studied S. populator specimen, which came from the archives at the National Museum of Natural History in Uruguay, is by far the largest fossil of the big cat ever identified to date.
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