Ice Age Sabertooth: The Most Ferocious Cat That Ever Lived

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

This latest volume in the Ice Age series focuses on the evolution, life,
and extinction of the sabertooth cat. In the Rancho La Brea tar pits in
the middle of downtown Los Angeles, scientists recovered the bones of
more than 2000 individual sabertooth cats, or Smilodon, which were
trapped in the naturally occurring asphalt over about a 30,000-year
period. It is from these bones that scientists and paleoartists have
been able to reconstruct what these creatures looked like.

The book discusses how they lived and hunted, and identifies three
distinct species. It also compares Smilodon to the wild and domestic
cats living today. The text is fact-filled, and the style of writing is
engaging and likely to hold the interest of a preteen reader. There is
no bibliography, even though the author frequently refers to scientific
research, occasionally citing contradictory opinions.

Mark Hallett’s paintings re-create scenes of the environment in which
the cat would have lived as well as scenes of Smilodon kills. These are
usually presented in full single pages or two-page spreads. The
illustrations are realistic in their detail and are supplemented with
photos of modern cats and sabertooth skeletons.

This is a better book than Ice Age Mammoth, which was published in
2001. While similar in format and layout, this volume does not engage in
the speculation about cloning that marred the earlier volume. Highly
recommended.