Thylacosmilus

Thylacosmilus is an extinct genus of saber-toothed metatherian mammals that inhabited South America from the Late Miocene to Late Pliocene epochs. Though Thylacosmilus looks similar to the "saber-toothed cats", it was not a felid, like the well-known American Smilodon, but a sparassodont, a group closely related to marsupials, and only superficially resembled other saber-toothed mammals due to convergent evolution, with the aforementioned Thylacosmilus being one of the last known sparassodonts. A 2005 study found that the bite forces of Thylacosmilus and Smilodon were low, which indicates that the killing techniques of saber-toothed animals differed from those of extant species. Remains of Thylacosmilus have been found primarily in Catamarca, Entre Ríos, and La Pampa Provinces in northern Argentina. Mass estimates of Thylacosmilus have varied depending on mass regressions, weighing 41–150 kg (90–331 lb), this makes Thylacosmilus one of the largest known metatherian predators. Thylacosmilus was one of the last sparassodonts to go extinct, going extinct during the Late Pliocene. Traditionally, it was hypothesized that carnivorans such as Smilodon, outcompeted Thylacosmilus, however recent analysis found no evidence of temporal overlap between Smilodon and Thylacosmilus. Instead the extinction of Thylacosmilus was likely due to climatic changes in its environment.

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