Sabre-toothed tigers weren't big biters

Although famed for its prominent set of choppers, the sabre-toothed tiger's bite was weak relative to modern-day big cats, with a force one-third that of a lion, scientists said Monday.

The findings, based on 3-D computer simulations drawn from fossil records of the carnivore, shed new light on the methods the Ice Age predator might have used to bring down its prey.

Writing in the online edition of the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of five paleontologists from the U.K. and Australia said the sabre-toothed tiger's skull and jaw muscles weren't as equipped as a lion's to handle the strain of forces required to chomp down on prey.

The results suggest the predator used different methods to hunt.

"We conclude that prey were brought to ground and restrained before a killing bite, driven in large part by powerful cervical musculature. Because large prey is easier to restrain if its head is secured, the killing bite was most likely directed to the neck," wrote lead author Stephen Wroe, a professor at the University of New South Wales's School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences.

By contrast, the lion's more powerful jaw muscles are necessary to asphyxiate prey otherwise too big to bring down, they said.

"Powerful jaw muscles may reflect a need for sustained rather than high peak bite forces, whereas less powerful jaws in the sabercat may reflect a more rapid kill," he wrote.

With canine teeth as long as 18 centimetres, sabre-toothed tigers belong to the species Smilodon fatalis. Theybecame extinct about 10,000 years ago, but are one of the best-known predators of the Cenezoic era, the period in Earth's history when mammals came to dominate the planet.