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The term saber-toothed cat describes numerous cat-like species that lived during various parts of the Cenozoic and evolved their saber-toothed characteristics entirely independently. The saber-tooth morphology is an excellent example of convergent evolution as it occurred repeatedly and independently in at least four distinct mammalian groups. All saber-tooth mammals lived between 9,000 and 33.7 million years ago, but the evolutionary lines that lead to the various saber-tooth genera started to diverge much earlier. The lineage that led to Thylacosmilus was the first to split off, in the late Cretaceous. It is a marsupial, and thus more closely related to kangaroos and opossums than the felines. The creodonts diverged next, and then the nimravids, before the blossoming of the truly feline saber-tooths.
Different species of saber toothed cats existed between 23 million and 10,000 years ago.

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11y ago

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