Australian Saber Tooth cat surivives.

[NomadicSky]

Australia was without a catlike analog when the Europeans arrived, probably even long before the first humans came, or maybe because of them. So for this we'll imagine that for whatever reason they survive. And there are many species of them some of them are as large as a cougar and others as small as the domestic cat.

The larger of the species would hide out in open fields hunting wildlife that lives in the bush.

Some of the smaller ones stayed to the trees, and others a small domestic cat sized species was specialized for living in the deserts.

 

[Cuāuhtemōc]

If the Aborigines don't hunt them to extinction, if the Europeans arrive, they sure will though I am interested in this small domestic cat-size saber tooth creature.

 

[Admiral Matt]

They died out for much the same reason the "real" saber-toothed cats did, because the megafauna they depended on declined. Although, yes, humans might have finished them off.

At any rate, for them to survive you need a great deal of the contemporaneous Australian wildlife to survive as well. A big cat requires big prey, and for those giant teeth to remain a worthwhile investment there must be large numbers of huge prey.

I'm not sure how you could maintain that in an environment as dry as Australia. Maybe the Ice Age doesn't end, so Australia doesn't dry out? But then of course, the Europeans may never get there, because there may not even be Europeans....

 

[Keenir]

Australia was without a catlike analog when the Europeans arrived, probably even long before the first humans came, or maybe because of them. So for this we'll imagine that for whatever reason they survive.

it's a world I'd prefer to live in, certainly.

though you're thinking of South America (the borhyenids)...Australia had Thylacaleo (the predatory wombat)

 

[Riain]

The thylacleo depended on the megafauna giant kangaroo, diprotodon and the robust leaf eating kangaroos. Without them everything that is left is fast and hard to catch and small and therefore not worth the effort.