THE skeleton of a huge sabre-toothed cat, the most formidable feline of its
time, has been dug up in Florida. About the size of a lion, Xenosmilus
roamed the south-east corner of North America in the Early Pleistocene. Larry
Martin of the University of Kansas in Lawrence and his colleagues found the
almost complete skeleton in a Florida quarry (Naturwissenschaften, vol
87, p 41).
Two other types of North American sabre-toothed cat are known, one
long-legged with shorter teeth, the other more stocky with huge canines.
Xenosmilus combines features from both. Although its teeth aren鈥檛 the most
impressive known, the cat was larger and had a more powerful bite than the
others. 鈥淚t would have had a more bear-like than cat-like appearance,鈥� Martin
says.