*Includes pictures
*Includes a bibliography for further reading
It is difficult to ignore the effortless cool of a saber-toothed tiger. The fanged feline was equipped with the savage strength of a lion, the lethal stealth of a puma, the intimidating gait of a black bear, and the strapping, muscular arms of a gorilla. Amazingly, however, those traits did not stand out as much as the long, dagger-like fangs that earned the Smilodon its famous nickname. The saber-toothed tiger, legend has it, was as ferocious as it was fearless, often tackling beasts twice their size.
Saber-toothed tigers were arguably the most fabled of all the Ice Age creatures. The fearsome beast has earned itself quite the reputation, and it has been referenced to, appeared in, and inspired unique characters in endless books, films, comics, and other pop culture mediums. For example, Marvel's Victor Creed, otherwise known as "Sabretooth," is most known as Wolverine's nemesis, and he's depicted as a hulking, vigorously robust menace in a red and orange-gold jumpsuit with a hunched back, a shock of wild blond hair, tiger-like claws, and frightening fangs. As that indicates, the prehistoric creature is often portrayed as impossibly cunning, unfeeling villains. Even in films geared towards children, such as the first of the Ice Age animations, the saber-toothed tigers, excluding Diego, are depicted as vicious and vindictive, lawless fiends whose sights are set on a Neanderthal toddler.
The name and reputation of the ruthless saber-toothed tiger, as enduring as it is chilling, overshadows those of its contemporaries, and the fanged feline remains a household name and one of the foremost symbols of the Ice Age to this very day.
It was a frosty, wintry September morning in 2012 when 11-year-old Yevgeny "Zhenya" Salinder donned his warmest quilted jacket, a knitted woolen cap, and matching mittens and headed out the door with his faithful, tail-wagging dogs in tow. Like most mornings, the kid ambled about near the Sopkarga polar weather station, an isolated region in the northern Russian Taymyr Peninsula where he resided, but this particular morning, his pace was slowed by a foul, almost eye-watering stench. Intrigued, Salinder and the dogs sniffed out the source of the strange miasma, and in the process they stumbled upon a defrosted pair of heels from an unknown creature protruding from the cold earth.
When young Salinder relayed what he had found to his parents, they alerted the authorities, but initially nobody had the slightest notion how profound the discovery was. The heels, as it turned out, were attached to the carcass of a 16-year-old woolly mammoth that perished some 30,000 years ago, almost completely intact. The mammoth, initially nicknamed "Zhenya" after its discoverer, was said to be the most significant discovery of a mammoth since 1901.
Since Georges Cuvier recognized the specimens as an extinct elephant species near the end of the 18th century, various finds of mammoth fossils, particularly in places where they were well preserved in the cold, have made the woolly mammoth perhaps the most popular extinct animal outside of the dinosaurs. Standing around 10 feet tall and weighing several tons, woolly mammoths seem like the stuff of legend, but ancient cave art indicated that unlike dinosaurs, woolly mammoths were contemporaries of early humans, with the last ones going extinct only about 4,000 years ago. All of that explains why people have long been fascinated by woolly mammoths and have even envisioned bringing them back to life via genetics sometime in the future.
Saber-Toothed Tigers and Woolly Mammoths: The History of the World's Most Famous Prehistoric Mammals looks at the origins of the famous cats, the fossil finds, and theories regarding their extinction. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about saber-toothed tigers like never before.