Actually, this little post is on the sabertooth tiger--I just felt like giving it a misleading name. 
Anyway, I managed to catch an episode of Evolve on the History channel yesterday and learned this from it:
- they dominated a huge chunk of the Ice Age
- the average size of their saber teeth is eight inches; the lions and tigers of today average about three inches
- the average sabertooth tiger could open it's mouth a good 110 degrees; HOWEVER, the gap between their saber teeth and their lower jaw was only three inches
- in theory, it's main method of kill was to aim for the thoat since that caused the best damage (whoa--oximoron much? -_-;)
- they could kill their prey within seconds and avoid scavengers from snatching their food altogether (which is very different from the lions of today, who take about five minutes to successfully kill their prey)
- one of two things happened to contribute to their extinction: either the change in climate wiped them out, or they were out-competited by mankind's earliest ancestors
- Oh yeah--and their scientific name is "smilodon", which literally sounds like "SMILE-oh-don" (this made me giggle a little bit throughout the episode)
Hope this was of interest. Later! 
Here's a painting of a smilodon (*giggles*) by Charles R. Knight, via Wikipedia, in all it's fierce glory:
