A saber-toothed cat skull was found in Iowa. How it may help save other big species

The first documented evidence that a particular species of saber-toothed cats used to live in what's now Iowa might help humanity save large mammals from a similar kind of extinction.

A skull found in 2017 in the East Nishnabotna River in Page County belonged to a saber-toothed cat that roamed the area about 13,500 years ago — give or take about a century — according to a news release from Iowa State University. Two professors, one from Iowa State and the other from Northwest Missouri State University, studied the skull and determined its age using radiocarbon dating, which measures the rate of radioactive decay in organic matter.

Their findings were published in March in a scientific journal.

The Iowa State researcher, Matthew Hill, an archaeology professor and animal bone expert, said the remains are evidence of a potentially viable and healthy population of cats in the area and show there were large herbivores present for carnivores to hunt.

What did a living saber-tooth look like?

The Smilodon fatalis saber-tooth that the skull belonged to was a young male that probably weighed upwards of 550 pounds, Hill said. That's larger than any big cat alive today, with the possible exception of some adult male tigers.

Unlike present-day tigers or mountain lions, S. fatalis did not have a long tail.

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Built for strength over speed, Hill said the saber-tooth was an ambush predator and potentially a solitary hunter.

"It's a real privilege to work with something this complete," he said of the remains he and Northwest Missouri professor David Easterla have studied.

Could this saber-tooth have interacted with people in the area?

"It's possible — I would say probable," Hill said, given overlap between the presence of the animals and the presence of people many thousands of years before the arrival of Europeans to North America.

How might understanding the end of this animal's era help save present-day species?

Hill said what's now Iowa at the time the saber-tooth was alive was not unlike parts of Africa today, with mammoths instead of elephants, horses instead of zebras, and saber-tooths instead of lions. There also were bison, giant ground sloths, bears, wolves and other large mammals.

But at the end of the Ice Age, that ecosystem collapsed and left just bison that thrived until the arrival of Europeans.

Hill said there's not much evidence to support the theory that early humans hunted the other species to extinction. Instead, there were probably multiple impacts of climate change.

Understanding what one species of saber-toothed cat's life and decline says about a region's ancient ecology might provide a broader understanding of the consequences of climate change, Hill said.

And that local level understanding of past extinctions could help forecast the impacts of human-driven climate change on large animal populations around the world: elephants, zebras, wildebeest, lions and leopards.

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"It's not about what we find. It's about what we find out," Hill said in a classroom as some of his students examined 3D-printed replicas of the saber-tooth skull.

Hill said the printed replicas don't capture the tiny serrations of the namesake canine tooth on the specimen, but the replica skulls did let Chaleigh Gobin, a sophomore from Pleasant Hill, and Brenden Patterson, a senior from Boone, use calipers to double-check Hill and Easterla's measurements of the skull.

Gobin and Patterson both are studying anthropology.

"It's great to get hands-on experience and it's helping us build connections whenever we graduate," Gobin said.

"I'm interested in animal bones. It's also one way to get experience with archaeological methods, a specific skill set that could come in handy later on," Patterson said.

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Phillip Sitter covers education for the Ames Tribune, including Iowa State University and PreK-12 schools in Ames and elsewhere in Story County. Phillip can be reached via email at psitter@gannett.com. He is on Twitter @pslifeisabeauty.

This article originally appeared on Ames Tribune: Saber-toothed cat skull found in Iowa a key to past and future studies