Some 12,000 years ago, the saber-toothed cat stalked grasslands across the Americas, pouncing on unsuspecting horses and bison before sinking its ferocious fangs into their throats and bellies.

But catching that prey came at a price. The big cats, known as Smilodon fatalis, suffered injuries to their shoulders and lower backs as a result of their hunting, a new study suggests. These battle wounds contrasted with those obtained by another top Pleistocene predator, the dire wolf. The wolves, which chased their prey over long distances and often to exhaustion, instead strained their necks and paws while on the hunt.

Paleontologists already thought smilodons ambushed their prey and dire wolves pursued them, but the new study provides further support for the creatures’ suspected predatory habits using evidence left behind on their own bones. It also suggests that the smilodon’s hunting method might have been riskier than the dire wolf’s. The paper was published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Caitlin Brown, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles, and lead author of the study, along with her colleagues analyzed more than 35,000 saber-toothed cat and dire wolf bones retrieved from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles.