Sabertooth

I recently read “Sabertooth” by Mauricio Anton. Obviously given my interests, this was one book I had to treat myself to. Anton and Turner’s “Big cats and their fossil relatives” was the first “technical” text I bought at the start of my D.Phil and has a special place in my heart (and bookshelf). That well thumbed volume was an invaluable help to getting a handle on the often confusing and complicated history of felid taxonomy and fossil description. I always get the feeling that the Felidae must be the most abstruse taxonomic family, outside the Hominidae, beset by lumpers and splitters all over the place. A favourite example comes from the history of two cat-like genera. Nimravides and Eofelis. It used to be thought that the family of carnivores now known as the Nimravidae were part of the Felidae. This lasted well into the twentieth century until a detailed examination of skulls (in particular the auditory bulla) showed that there was a great degree of separation between the two families. Unfortunately, this splitting led to species being moved from one family to another despite being named under the assumption that nimravids were cats and cats were nimravids. The genus Eofelis (literally “dawn cat”) moved to the nimravid side. The genus Nimravides moved to the felid side. Ugh!

Anyway, the new book is a beauty. Mauricio has, I think wisely, broadened the scope from just the more familiar machairodont sabertooths (e.g. Smilodon, Homotherium) to include also the marsupial sabertooths and creodont sabertooths, on top of the sabre-toothed nimravids and barbourofelids. This meant that personally, I found a lot more new information on mammal groups I was generally unfamiliar with. The writing is lucid and clear throughout, without being overly technical where it is not needed. In a book like this it can be very difficult to pitch the right tone- appealing to specialists and laypeople alike. I think Mauricio managed to get it almost right in this book. 

The main draw for many will be the unparalleled beauty of Mauricio’s art. Almost nobody can match him for the lithe grace and exoticism of his paleontological reconstructions of extinct felids. That Mauricio has spent countless hours observing wild felids in their natural environment and hours more dissecting every muscle and tendon shows in his work, produced with the eye of a field naturalist and a palaeontologist combined in one. A minor niggle is that some of the artwork has been recycled from “Big cats and their fossil relatives” but given the overlap between the two books and the obvious effort that must have gone into the paintings and drawings this can be more than forgiven.

I have been lucky enough to have had a small amount of professional interaction with Mauricio. He was extremely generous in allowing us to use his wonderful images of Smilodon fatalis and Miracinonyx trumani in our paper on their evolution. For that I am hugely appreciative.