“Smilodon” means “scalpel tooth,” a fitting descriptor for an ancient big cat whose deadly canines measured up to 18 centimetres long. A key top predator, the sabre-toothed cat would have stalked large herbivores—horses, camels, giant ground sloths and more—by hiding and pouncing on them, much like today’s big cats.

Despite being synonymous with the Ice Age, you won’t find Smilodon perched atop a glacier—this prehistoric big cat preferred warmer climes. Its fossils are among the most common ones found in the tar pit deposits of California, but its range extended across ice-free areas of North, Central and South America. In 2019, a 35,000-to-40,000-year-old bone became the first verified evidence of Smilodon fatalis’ existence in the prehistoric plains of southern Alberta, before becoming extinct at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, around 11,700 years ago.