Smilodon: How Saber-Toothed Cats Ambushed and Killed Mammoths – New Fossils Reveal Bloody Kill Details

Newly analysed fossils from California’s Rancho La Brea and a dramatic 2025 discovery in Nebraska’s Waco Mammoth Site have finally revealed exactly how Smilodon fatalis hunted mammoths. These saber-toothed cats were not lone gladiators but powerful ambush predators that used stealth, brute strength, and their iconic 20-cm sabers to deliver lethal throat bites.

The key evidence comes from a partial Smilodon skull and ᴀssociated mammoth bones showing deep, parallel saber punctures in the neck and shoulder region of a juvenile Columbian mammoth. The wounds match the exact spacing and curvature of Smilodon canines. Healed bite marks on several Smilodon specimens indicate they sometimes survived close encounters with adult mammoths, while isotopic analysis of the new fossils confirms a diet heavily reliant on large herbivores.

Smilodon’s mᴀssive forelimbs and retractile claws allowed it to wrestle prey to the ground before driving its sabers deep into the throat or belly to sever major arteries. The cat’s relatively weak bite force was compensated by this precision killing technique — a strategy far more efficient than the bone-crushing jaws of modern big cats.

Published in PNAS (March 2026) by a team including researchers from the La Brea Tar Pits and University of Nebraska, the study shows Smilodon likely hunted in small groups or pairs when targeting mammoths, using the landscape for cover. These “bloody details” transform our view of Ice Age predator-prey dynamics and explain why Smilodon thrived for over a million years until the megafauna vanished.