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Smilodon, the catty predator whose ancestors emerged in the early Miocene, will not smile on us again.

The fearsome, saber-like teeth of Smilodon fatalis -- California's state fossil -- are familiar to anyone who has ever visited Los Angeles' La Brea Tar Pits, a sticky trap from which more than 2,000 saber-toothed cat skulls have been excavated over more than a century.

Paleontologists still do not know how saber-toothed animals like Smilodon hunted prey without breaking their unwieldy sabers.

Thanks to the wealth of saber-toothed cat fossils, which includes many thousands of skeletal parts in addition to skulls, unearthed from the La Brea Tar Pits, scientists know a lot more about Smilodon fatalis than about any other saber-toothed animal, even though at least five separate lineages of saber-toothed animals evolved around the world.

Smilodon roamed widely across North America and into Central America, going extinct about 10,000 years ago.