A version of this story appears in the December 2020 issue of National Geographic magazine.
In the South American savanna of the Pleistocene epoch, the saber-toothed big cat Smilodon survived by ambushing resident megafauna. A fossilized skull from Uruguay shows that some Smilodon were giants. It’s not clear if this cat hunted solo or in a pack—but studies reveal that its bite, bone structure, and limb strength made it a formidable predator.
(Not all saber-toothed animals were predators, fossils reveal.)
