A complete sabertooth cat cranium from the Midcontinent of North America and its evolutionary and ecological context

Abstract

Outside of Rancho La Brea, southern California, United States, knowledge of the life history, ecology, and extinction of large, late Pleistocene carnivores in North America is frustrated by a scarcity of skeletal material and trustworthy radiocarbon dates. A complete Smilodon fatalis (sabertooth cat) cranium from southwestern Iowa, directly AMS radiocarbon dated to 11,685 ± 40 B.P. (13,605–13,455 cal B.P.), represents an important addition to the inventory of evidence for the taxon in the Midcontinent. Assessment of tooth eruption and wear combined with metric and nonmetric comparisons with coeval crania from Pit 61/67 at Rancho La Brea indicates the specimen belongs to a subadult male 2–3 years of age at death. Craniodental morphology falls within the range of variation in the Pit 61/67 males. Predicted live weight is 251 kg. One C1 has an antemortem bend fracture, and the absence of use-wear on the proximal remnant suggests death ensued within days of the injury. The radiocarbon date centers the animal in the Bølling-Allerød Chronozone (14,640–12,845 cal B.P.). Whereas regional conditions were generally warmer and wetter during this period, southwestern Iowa was a cool, dry non-analog boreal grassland/parkland that supported a diverse, large herbivore community, including Megalonyx jeffersonii (Jefferson's ground sloth), the taxon tentatively identified in this study as the focal prey. Bayesian modeling of 72 direct radiocarbon dates for the taxon suggests extinction of the late Quaternary Smilodon was a hemispheric and geologically synchronic phenomenon that occurred after 13,285 cal B.P.Subjects: vertebrate paleontology, paleoecology, paleozoology.