Homotherium

Homotherium is an extinct genus of machairodontine saber-toothed cats, often termed scimitar-toothed cats, that ranged from North America, South America, Eurasia, and Africa during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs (5 mya–11,700 years ago), existing for approximately 5 million years.

It first became extinct in Africa some 1.5 million years ago. In Eurasia it survived until about 30,000 years ago. In South America it is only known from a few remains in the northern region (Venezuela), from the mid-Pleistocene. The most recent remains of homotherium dates to 28,000 years BP.

Taxonomy and evolution

The name Homotherium (Greek: ὁμός (homos, ‘same’) and θηρίον (therion, ‘beast’) was proposed by Fabrini (1890), without further explanation, for a new subgenus of Machairodus, whose main distinguishing feature was the presence of a large diastema between the two inferior premolars

Homotherium probably derived from Machairodus and appeared for the first time at the Miocene-Pliocene border, about 5 million years ago. During the Pleistocene it occurred in vast parts of Eurasia, North America and until the middle Pleistocene (about 1.5 million years ago) even in Africa. A fossil of H. crenatidens was inadvertently dredged from the bed of the North Sea, which was a flat, low-lying extent of marshy tundra laced with rivers during the recent glaciation. There has also been a discovery of 1.8 million-year-old fossils in Venezuela, indicating that scimitar cats were able to invade South America along with Smilodon during the Great American Interchange. These remains form the holotype of Homotherium venezuelensis. How long they lasted in South America is not yet evident. Homotherium survived in Eurasia until about 28,000 years ago.