DD1991 Posted August 18, 2022 Share Posted August 18, 2022 It's common knowledge that Smilodon has been mistakenly called the "saber-toothed tiger", yet it and other machairodontines were not closely related to the tiger or other members of the felid subfamily Pantherinae. However, Smilodon was the not the first saber-toothed cat to be bestowed the epithet "saber-toothed tiger". In a poem about Pleistocene mammals found in England, British poet Thomas Miller refers to the European machairodontine Homotherium latidens as a "saber-toothed tiger", in which case people in Europe and America had yet to literally use the term "saber-tooth tiger" for the Smilodon. Link: https://incertaesedisblog.wordpress.com/2022/06/28/the-origin-of-sabre-toothed-tiger/ 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpc Posted August 19, 2022 Share Posted August 19, 2022 The poem dates from 1849. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jpc Posted August 20, 2022 Share Posted August 20, 2022 (edited) And the guy who wrote the blog has been our summer intern at theTate Museum Edited August 20, 2022 by jpc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DD1991 Posted August 21, 2022 Author Share Posted August 21, 2022 On 8/19/2022 at 5:09 PM, jpc said: And the guy who wrote the blog has been our summer intern at theTate Museum Tyler Greenfield may have been caught off guard to see that an 1846 poem by a British poet about the Pleistocene fauna of the UK implicitly referred to Homotherium latidens as a "saber-toothed tiger", because that misnomer has been historically used for Smilodon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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