Meet a sabretooth cat!

Behold - a mighty sabretooth cat!

This one is by far my favorite extinct mammal and I think it is for obvious reasons. I was fascinated by the peculiar long fangs it had and I still enjoy reading about theories regarding the use of these teeth. I am not the oldest guy around, yet I remember reading (in a book older than me :P), how sabretooth supposedly couldn't eat large prey because long fangs didn't allow it to swallow anything to big. However, it has been found out that it could open jaws to as much as 120°, compared to modern lion's 60! It (again, supposedly) only had 1/3 of a lion's strength in a bite and fangs are believed to be pretty brittle. The interesting belief is, that animal was like a lion on steroids, really muscular and strong.

Now, I've read about two different ideas on how it used to hunt. While I am no expert myself, neither self-taught beyond few books and documentaries, nor actually educated in this field, I found one much more likely than the other.
The first idea puts a cat on a tree or in some other ambush position, where it would wait for prey to come along (usually one of the previously shown megafaunas) jump on it, sunk its fangs in the animal and back off until the prey bled to death.
Now, I find this unlikely. While lynxes do jump from trees, they're much smaller and I just can't imagine a big muscular animal climbing on branches...but then again, big cats do that often. I could say my opinion is biased as I find waiting for animal to bleed out kinda boring :D.

Anyhow, the second idea is, that sabretooth used its weight and strength to wrestle big animals and then used its fangs to snap the throat, like modern cats do, but closing the "pincers" faster because of the long teeth. While it muscular front paws and back legs could help it brawl, it was too slow to catch anything fast - it was a specialized megafauna predator. It is believed it went extinct shortly after its favorable prey went extinct as well.

Whatever the reason was, the animal appears in Strange Aeons just as that - a sabretooth. While rules mix mammals and dinosaurs, I'd say my choice of going more mammalian comes out a bit better.

This particular model is from Steve Barbers and I while I really liked it at first, I am sitting on a fence by now.

I am a bit clumsy and I've manged to drop the miniature while putting primer on (brushing it on). It fell about a centimeter or two down on a ceramic plate I use as my palette and this is the result:

I got no idea how it has happened, perhaps it hit a grain of sand (I was putting sand on my bases and few could get on a plate, but I haven't seen any), or something, but it literally got brain damaged. I've fixed it with some putty, so it was no problem, but it was a bit of pa party pooper.

Secondly, I wanted to do a bit more elaborate paint job than simple sandy colors and I've messed its fur up with useless camouflage pattern before I've decided it isn't working. Too lazy to start again, I've kept it. Not too visible, but shows my lack of feeling for colors nicely. I'm horrible! :D

Next, I really liked its big eyes at first, but now that I've painted them and the cat looks retarded, I've decided I'd prefer small eyes that I could simply put some wash in and keep them at that!

Other than that, I really like it's unusual, threatening pose.
I've based it on (thanks for the idea Colgar! :D) 20mm round and square bases. I've cut round base on half and put it on each side, producing "40k bike base", but in 20x40. I'll use same technique for actual "bike bases" as those are awfully expensive.

Below is the ordinary "encounter!" scale shot and a quick set up of a sabretooth versus megatherium fight! It could be just me, but I think Steve Barber's miniatures might be a bit on the smaller size, while my megatherium appears even bigger, as it is sculpted in roughly 1:50 scale. Good luck biting that throat Smilodon!

Thanks for looking,
Mathyoo