The dangers of being a saber-toothed cat in Los Angeles
Saber-toothed cats that roamed Los Angeles 12,000 years ago had many injuries to their shoulders and backbones that likely occurred when they killed large herbivore prey such as bison and horses, UCLA biologists report in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution. Their Southern California contemporary, the dire wolf, was more likely to suffer from injuries to the head, neck, ankles and wrists, the researchers report. “The difference in neck injuries between the two animals is dramatic,” said lead author Caitlin Brown, a UCLA doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology. “The dire wolves had many neck injuries clustered together that could have resulted from the wolves being dragged by thrashing prey, as we see in modern wolves. In contrast, the saber-toothed cat has almost no neck or head injury, which implies that they were avoiding damage to their precious teeth.” Brown and another UCLA doctoral student in ecology and evolutionary biology, Mairin Balisi, analyzed more...