Hello everyone, my name is Ivaan and I'm Dad. Welcome to my channel Facts with Ivaan. I'm in year one and every day I come across millions of new facts, some interesting and some boring. On this channel I show you some amazing facts.

Let's move to the fact of the day. Let's continue our series on prehistoric animals just to recap we are discussing evolution of animals from the quaternary period when the ice age took place in our last episode we talked about Thylacolio, a lion which was a mass appeal. If you have not heard it already, then do listen to the last episode.

Today we are going to talk about Smilodon. I'm sure most of you have seen a Smilodon, not in real but in a movie. The saber-toothed tiger in the movie Ice Age is a Smilodon. These cats were the main hunters of big animals during the Quaternary period. A sabre is a curved sword and that is exactly what Smilodon's long front teeth were like. They could easily slash through thick skin and muscle.

So Smilodon used to live in North America and were almost 1.5 metres long. These tigers were no fast runners. Instead, they trapped their prey and wounded it. Their primary food were big mammals like mammoths. Smilodon became extinct around 10,000 years ago. Their extinction may have been linked to the decline and extinction of the other large herbivores on which it preyed. Climate change and competition from other predators may also have added to the disappearance of Smilodon.

This is all I wanted to talk about Smilodon. Let's discuss another prehistoric animal in the next episode.