Smilodon, often called a saber-toothed cat or incorrectly a saber-toothed tiger, is an extinct genus of machairodonts. This saber-toothed cat was endemic to North and South America. Smilodon was a large, muscular predator that may well have snacked on early humans as well as the Woolly Mammoths and Giant Sloths of the Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs. They would leap on its prey suddenly from the high branches of trees, digging its huge incisors into the unfortunate animal's neck and then withdrawing to a safe distance while its dinner bled to death. Thousands of intact Smilodon skeletons have been extracted from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los AngelesIllustration originally captioned: Saber tooth tiger by Charles R. Knight, 1903. American Museum of Natural History.