Looks can deceive… A South American sabertooth-lookalike,
Thylacosmilus was in fact a marsupial – at roughly the size of a
jaguar, one of the largest marsupial carnivores. Looks a great
deal like a saber tooth tiger, huh? The similarity between
Thylacosmilus and Smilodon is an excellent example of convergent
evolution - two distantly relating forms converging upon a
simular morphology and life habitat. There are an three other
examples of mammals that have developed saber-teeth- in fact
most of the last 65 million years had some large cat-like saber-
toothed mammal present, the modern biota is the outlier.
Thylacosmilus went extinct roughly 3 million years ago, closely
coinciding with the formation of the land bridge linking the
Americas. Animals from North America emigrated south and those
from South America journeyed north; this fauna exchange is
referred to as the Great American Interchange. It is at this
time we start to find Smilodon fossils in South America. It is
thought that the arrival of this relativ