There is a wide diversity of machairodont sabercats in the fossil record, but the genus Smilodon is undoubtedly the celebrity of the group. Indeed, Smilodon seems to set the bar for other saber-toothed predators in the popular media, the carnivore being synonymous with the La Brea Tar Pits (even though the Dire Wolf [Canis dirus] is more numerous at the famous predator trap). This is not terribly surprising, though; the remains of Smilodon are plentiful, the skeleton can be fully reconstructed, and its enlarged canines make it look terrifyingly fierce, making it the Pleistocene mammalian equivalent to Tyrannosaurus. Such notoriety has its drawbacks, though, as groups like nimravids and creodonts are often ignored, Smilodon seeming to publicly represent all saber-toothed predators everywhere (and we know this is not the case).
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I for one think Homotherium is underrated, and really deserves a lot more attention:
(i) This was a wide-ranging genus with a long temporal range; homotheres probably lived alongside (and occasionally preyed on) australopithecines and early Homo. When hominids left Africa, they only found more homotheres living in Eurasia as well. Then when Homo sapiens crossed the Bering, who should they find in North America but yet another species of Homotherium.
(ii) Strange and different morphology from not just extant felids, but also the other sabertooths - semi-retractile claws, body proportions like a hyena, possibly even semi-plantigrade stance; seriously, WTF?
(iii) Unlike the traditional stereotype of Smilodon hunting mammoths, there is some actual evidence that Homotherium fed on Ice Age proboscideans.
(iv) Homotherium might be the only sabertooth cat to be represented in early Homo sapiens artifacts; Darren Naish has a post on a figurine which might represent Homotherium.
It's criminal that there are so many documentaries featuring Smilodon, but only the BBC's Wild New World seems to have made an effort to reconstruct a Homotherium.
What he said. Most visitors to the Page Museum here are unaware that we also had the American lion, which was substantially bigger than Smilodon. I often wonder what happened when a lion and a Smilodon encountered each other . . .
Indeed, the only problem is that most museums around me don't have too many specimens of lesser-known predators, so I can only put up pictures of what I've got. I don't want to diminish the importance of the animals that both of you mentioned though, and I wish I had photos of them to share!
link
for information (and a referenced paper) about unusually dense bone in sabercats, sea otters and Homo erectus.