Smilodon

Smilodon populator, the infamous “saber-toothed tiger.” As its appearance suggests, Smilodon was not actually a true tiger, but rather a member of another group of felines, the machairodontines.

This classic prehistoric animal inhabited the Americas during the Pleistocene and Holocene epochs, and it even lived in my country, Brazil (where its first fossils were discovered). Being the largest and most robust species of the genus, S. populator reached approximately 1.2 m in height at the shoulders and had a skull nearly 40 cm long.

Although it was named in 1842, it was only almost a century later, in 1941, that a paper was published describing a complete skeleton of S. populator, thus establishing its anatomy and proportions as somewhat different from those of modern big cats.

Cold porcelain, 1:10 scale.