{"id":966008,"date":"2026-07-29T04:11:15","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T04:11:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/966008\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T04:11:15","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T04:11:15","slug":"inside-the-painful-end-of-the-saber-toothed-cat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/966008\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside the Painful End of the Saber-Toothed Cat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        Saber-toothed cats may have been limping toward extinction long before they vanished. A new study of more than 3,700 vertebrae from Smilodon fatalis found at Los Angeles&#8217; La Brea Tar Pits documents high rates of congenital spinal deformities and a few rare nerve tumors\u2014conditions researchers link to sustained inbreeding as populations shrank near the end of the last ice age, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/content\/article\/saber-toothed-cats-became-inbred-and-struggled-move-they-went-extinct\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Science<\/a> reports. The abnormalities likely made movement painful and hunting difficult, pushing the giant predators to rely on easy meals like animals already mired in tar, according to the study published in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/journals\/veterinary-science\/articles\/10.3389\/fvets.2026.1857385\/full\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Frontiers in Veterinary Science<\/a>.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        Tumors on spinal nerves are rare in modern humans, with an occurrence of 0.38 per 100,000 individuals. The rate was 1,000 times higher in the saber-toothed cat sample at 353 per 100,000 individuals, per <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencenews.org\/article\/spine-saber-toothed-cat-tumor-extinct\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Science News<\/a>, which notes that two of the three fossils bearing evidence of tumors date to 12,000 and 13,000 years ago, not long before the species went extinct. While it&#8217;s unclear whether these abnormalities affected saber-toothed cats more broadly, experts say the study offers a rare window into the health effects of population decline\u2014an ancient warning that today&#8217;s embattled big carnivores could face a similar genetic squeeze.&#13;\n                                    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; Saber-toothed cats may have been limping toward extinction long before they vanished. A new study of more&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":966009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8],"tags":[108094,43458,388096,159,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-966008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-inbreeding","tag-population-decline","tag-saber-toothed-cats","tag-science","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117001315007420820","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/966009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}