Megantereon
| Megantereon | |
|---|---|
| M. cultridens skeleton on display at the Natural History Museum of Basel, Switzerland | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Carnivora |
| Suborder: | Feliformia |
| Family: | Felidae |
| Subfamily: | †Machairodontinae |
| Tribe: | †Smilodontini |
| Genus: | †Megantereon Croizet & Jobert, 1828 |
| Type species | |
| Megantereon cultridens (Cuvier, 1824) | |
| Other species | |
|
See text | |
| Synonyms | |
|
M. cultridens
M. falconeri
M. whitei
| |
Megantereon is an extinct genus of prehistoric machairodontine saber-toothed cat that lived in Eurasia, Africa and possibly North America from the late Pliocene to the Middle Pleistocene. It is a member of the tribe Smilodontini, and closely related to and possibly the ancestor of the famous American sabertooth Smilodon. In comparison to Smilodon it was somewhat smaller, around the size of a jaguar, though it is thought to have had a similar hunting strategy as an ambush predator.