Machairodontinae in the context of "Smilodon populator"

Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its last member. A taxon may become functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to reproduce and recover. As a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence.

Over five billion species are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryotes globally, possibly many times more if microorganisms are included. Notable extinct animal species include non-avian dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, and mammoths. Through evolution, species arise through the process of speciation. Species become extinct when they are no longer able to survive in changing conditions or against superior competition. The relationship between animals and their ecological niches has been firmly established. A typical species becomes extinct within 10 million years of its first appearance, although some species, called living fossils, survive with little to no morphological change for hundreds of millions of years, though this claim has been disputed.

Mauricio Antón Ortuzar (born 1961 in Bilbao, Spain) is a Spanish paleoartist, vertebrate paleontologist, and illustrator. As a paleontologist specialising in carnivoran mammals, he has written extensively about sabertooth cats, as well as other groups like hyenas and amphicyonids. As a paleoartist and illustrator, he has created numerous illustrations of prehistoric life illustrating carnivorans as well as other animals (typically mammals), and archaic humans. Antón is one of the most widely known and influential contemporary paleoartists.

Homotherium is an extinct genus of scimitar-toothed cat belonging to the extinct subfamily Machairodontinae that inhabited North America, Eurasia, and Africa, as well as possibly South America during the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs from around 4 million to 12,000 years ago. A probable descendant of Amphimachairodus, it was one of the last surviving members of Machairodontinae alongside the more famous sabertooth Smilodon, to which it was not particularly closely related. It was a large cat, comparable in size to a lion with a body mass of up to 200 kilograms (440 lb), functioning as an apex predator in the ecosystems it inhabited. It had an elongate neck and relatively elongate legs, a relatively short back and a very short tail, with the mummy of a H. latidens cub of Late Pleistocene age found in Siberia having a plain dark brown coat colour. In comparison to Smilodon, the canines of Homotherium were shorter, though still longer than those of living cats, and it is suggested to have had a different ecology from Smilodon as a moderate speed endurance pursuit predator adapted to running down large prey, such as antelope, equines, bovines, and juvenile mammoths in open habitats, with Homotherium also proposed to have likely engaged in cooperative hunting.

Once widely distributed over most of the world's continents, the genus saw a protracted decline over the course of the Pleistocene, disappearing from Africa during the Early Pleistocene around 1.5 million years ago, and declining in abundance and distribution in Eurasia during the Middle Pleistocene, though with a handful of records in the Late Pleistocene. In North America, the genus survived until the end of the Late Pleistocene around 12,000 years ago, becoming extinct as part of the end-Pleistocene extinction event along with most other large animals native to the Americas. This followed the arrival of humans into the Americas, who may have caused a decline in populations of large prey on which Homotherium depended.

Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its last member. A taxon may become functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to reproduce and recover. As a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence.

Over five billion species are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryotes globally, possibly many times more if prokaryotes are included. Notable extinct animal species include non-avian dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, and mammoths. Through evolution, species arise through the process of speciation. Species become extinct when they are no longer able to survive in changing conditions or against superior competition. The relationship between animals and their ecological niches has been firmly established. A typical species becomes extinct within 10 million years of its first appearance, although some species, called living fossils, survive with little to no morphological change for hundreds of millions of years, though this claim has been disputed.

Megantereon is an extinct genus of prehistoric machairodontine saber-toothed cat that lived in Eurasia, Africa and possibly North America from the late Pliocene to the Middle Pleistocene. It is a member of the tribe Smilodontini, and closely related to and possibly the ancestor of the famous American sabertooth Smilodon. In comparison to Smilodon it was somewhat smaller, around the size of a jaguar, though it is thought to have had a similar hunting strategy as an ambush predator.