Around
12,000 years ago at the end of the Pleistocene, some of Earth's biggest mammals
started going extinct — mammoths, mastodons, cave bears and dire wolves among
them.
The
cause of this mass die-out is still debated, though some researchers have
pointed to dwindling food resources, possibly driven by warming temperatures
and competition with humans, as a culprit. A new study suggests, however, that
at least two of these long-gone creatures, sabertooth cats and their feline
cousins, American lions, didn't starve to death.
Big
carnivores facing scarce resources often gnaw their prey to the bone and signs
of this voracious eating behavior are evident in the wear and tear on their
teeth. But the teeth of sabertooth cats and American lions from the La Brea Tar
Pits in California have no such marks that would indicate a period of distress
before extinction, the new analysis shows.
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