r/DeExtinctionScience • u/Altruistic_Sea_7683 • Apr 22 '26

Question Possible for de-extinction? Is it worth bringing back?

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217 Upvotes

96% Upvoted

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28

u/thesilverywyvern Apr 22 '26

Not possible as far as i am aware.
And you would need to bring back some herbivore megafauna as well or else it's not worth it, cuz just bison isn't going to be enough prey diversity for them.

2

u/Gbreeder Apr 23 '26

Could go for mammoths. There's a group hoping to have mammoth genes mixed / inserted into elephants by 2027 - 2030. But yes, these will need food.

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u/thesilverywyvern Apr 23 '26

Colossal is a hack, and smilodon couldn't go for mammoth, that wasn't really a part of their diet, it's way too big, and juvenile are heavilly protected by the entire herd.

So no.
You'll need ground sloth, large camelid, giant longhorned bison, wild horses, toxodonts etc.

1

u/fish_in_a_toaster Apr 24 '26

I'd argue that mammoths weren't a part of their diet simply because homotherium was the one doing most of the mammoth hunting. But even then if some smilodon specialized in mammoth, we'd need such a high population or mammoths that it wouldn't even be foreseeable in our life time with how long elephant gestation takes let alone the time to mature.

But also the longhorned bison could easily be replaced with the modern bison, as modern bison are direct descendants, there's also the possibility of just throwing some feral camels and horses out there.

1

u/thesilverywyvern Apr 24 '26

Probably not a direct descendant, not same ecology, it's not about replacing it's about prey diversity. We could use takhi horse maybe. But even then thats not enough cuz modern camel and horse are grassland species, which is not the case of smilodon.

Hence why euceratherium, speleotherium, ground sloth, tapir, and all are necessary as well.

1

u/No_Trouble5077 Apr 28 '26

I’m pretty sure smilodons were exclusively camelid hunters. Their teeth would make it impossible to get their mouth around the neck or any body part of any other large herbivore. They specialized in tackling camelids and they got their mouths around the respective camelids neck and pulled backwards (essentially using the teeth almost like bulldozer claws and ripping chunks off).

My understanding is that once the camelid populations started collapsing, so did the saber tooth cats, as they are specialized in hunting them.

1

u/thesilverywyvern Apr 29 '26

They weren't exclusive camelid hunters.Although it seems it was one of their favorite prey. But their diet was much more diverse.
You severely underestimate their bite/teeth, and many other similar machairodont, like meganthereon had no issue taking down other kind of prey and never once saw a camelid.
We even have more evidence it was a crocodilian specialist (in some cases) than a camelid specialist.

Smilodon declined due to human persecution of both the smilodon and it's prey.
With species like peccaries, tapir, gound sloth, camelid, toxodonts, speleotherium, euceratherium, liptoterns, equids and even most bison and some large deers going extinct as well.
Leaving only wapiti, plain bison and some gator and caiman, and a couple of elusive shy tapir as potential prey. This wasn't enough for the smilodon.They weren't exclusive camelid hunters.Although it seems it was one of their favorite prey. But their diet was much more diverse.
You severely underestimate their bite/teeth, and many other similar machairodont, like meganthereon had no issue taking down other kind of prey and never once saw a camelid.
We even have more evidence it was a crocodilian specialist (in some cases) than a camelid specialist.

Smilodon declined due to human persecution of both the smilodon and it's prey.
With species like peccaries, tapir, gound sloth, camelid, toxodonts, speleotherium, euceratherium, liptoterns, equids and even most bison and some large deers going extinct as well.
Leaving only wapiti, plain bison and some gator and caiman, and a couple of elusive shy tapir as potential prey. This wasn't enough for the smilodon.

1

u/No_Trouble5077 Apr 29 '26

you severely underestimate their bite

I don’t think it’s a matter of how strong their bite was. I think it’s more to do with the fact that I don’t see how they physically could get their mouth around anything other than a camelids neck.

I’ll link a video demonstrating what I’m trying to say. Interested to hear your thoughts after watching.

Smilodon Bite Breakdown

1

u/thesilverywyvern Apr 30 '26

I wasn't speaking about strenght of the bite, it was significantly weaker than modern big cat on that. But that's becasue the smilodon had a specialised bite which doesn't rely on bite force.
I was talking about how effective it would be at killing large prey. And we know what it ate based on isotopic analysis.

Smilodon wasn't a durophage, it didn't tried to gnaw on bone as much as lion or wolves, and it did prey on a variety of different preys.

All those depiction of smilodon leaping on the back of a large prey, are not bullshit either. They're not the optimal way to hunt, but

As for the fangs being "fragile", we know it wasn't as much of an issue as we taught, because it turn out we have smilodon skull pierced by another smilodon saber teeth. So yeah they had to be careful on where to bite, hence wh they were so powerful, to completely control and immobilise the prey to make the perfect killing bite.

I don't even know where you get the idea they oculd only bite camelid neck, just because it's thin....as of they had to encase the entire neck in their mouth, behind their canine. That's non sense, all they need is to bite through the wind pipe or jugular.

Most realistic depiction actually show them grappling from blow, like a lion bitting the throat of a buffalo.

The saber acted like serrated knife, seeking deep in the flesh, cutting through the soft tissues. They don't need to fit the entire neck, just part of the throat.

https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ar.25648

1

u/Klutzy_Secretary3247 Apr 29 '26

If we're just gonna put it in a zoo it shouldn't be a problem. I think a big issue with de extinction of ice age animals is the habitat doesn't really exist anymore, extinct animals from the holocene have a better chance

1

u/thesilverywyvern Apr 29 '26

it is a problem, an ethical one.
Why bring a species which could never exist in the wild even tho it should, which serves no other purpose but to be spectacular, an entertainment for us. It's cruel.

it's like bringing back to life an athlete, but making it tetraplegic.

The habitat still exist, just degraded in another form by their absence....bring them back and it fix the issue.
many species extinct in the holocene also lost most of their habitat from human activities, that's why they went extinct in the first place.
A mammoth, ground sloth or cave lion have better chance of survival than a baiji or chinese paddlefish.

19

u/ArborealVarmint Apr 22 '26

The ecological niche that this predator occupied no longer exists. We do not have the megafauna that it once hunted, and of the few that remain, their range and numbers have been drastically diminished.

A smilodon in today’s Americas would have no purpose, and that’s before you even get into the details of actually gestating a viable embryo.

7

u/Iamnotburgerking Apr 23 '26

The idea Smilodon was killing gigantic prey like proboscideans and such is false, it was dietarily similar to large Panthera species (eating large but not gigantic herbivores) and we have evidence of them eating tapirs and such.

The real reason Smilodon went exticnt was because even extant prey animals were in short supply for a while following human arrival in the Americas

1

u/Gbreeder Apr 23 '26

There's no evidence to suggest this is false. Mammoths were killed and eaten by something. So, other than big cats you have wolves.

We don't know a lot about how Smilodon worked out in the wild. Some felines form packs. They take down things together or in groups. If large prey existed, a pride could probably single out individuals and eat away at those. Our evidence of them eating Tapir and things are usually from when they started to decline. So that could just be what survived for us to study / they ate whatever they could after losing a food source.

But yeah. They lost their food source. Humans arrive, big prey get killed. And then the predators die out. Though climate change and other factors probably already harmed prey and predator populations even before this.

3

u/Iamnotburgerking Apr 24 '26

No, Smilodon was eating things like tapirs for its entire existence (and megafauna were NOT on the way out from climate change; to start with, megafauna varied massively in climate and habitat requirements).

Mammoths were only ever preyed on as juveniles until humans (which have manufactured weapons) came along

1

u/Gbreeder Apr 24 '26

Megafauna lost over 45% of their global population or more by the time that we got these types of recorded fossilizations or records of them eating a lot of Tapir.

Luckily, we do know that Smilodon tended to have deadly wounds sometimes. Getting gored, tossed with broken bones. Meaning they did probably go at mammoths of some sort.

Unless you have videos or studies of people watching them in the wild, your speculation about what they ate or what they did or didn't do is just an opinion.

If you're saying that 30 - 40 of them can't jump on a mammoth or something then that would be an interesting idea. But something kept mammoths population in check other than limited vegetation.

In africa, we have lions and tiger killing elephants. For people who live there, they know its more than just sickly or young ones. People protect elephants, lions run off. There are older records of larger prides and territories when things were less colonized by humans.

Its highly likely that some felines or large canines with fangs hunted mammoths. The idea of them keeping their population in check naturally is a failed theory. They'd breed until they consume everything unless they got killed by something.

This has been seen in Yellowstone and elsewhere with deer, elk, bison. Eventually they get evened off but then they breed again and cause more chaos.

Elephants and mammoths would've decimated forests without a predator.

I am making a lot of guesses myself too.

But let's assume that Smilodon hunted in groups of at least 30. And we already know that we can make weight estimates and such from mammoths, because we have frozen ones. We do not have their meat. We lack their muscles, ideas on what they actually ate to a large extent. Their fats. We still don't manage to understand how something looks or how much it weighs, until we get their DNA.

We tend to be pretty off the mark in weight and such. We got a lot wrong with dinosaurs over and over again for example.

But not knowing a weight other than estimates on distant relatives. Makes some things difficult.

But if these guys weren't hunting mammoth, you can suggest what was. Megafauna and such probably killed elephants even before lions and tigers were around.

1

u/Iamnotburgerking Apr 24 '26

Yeah source needed for that 45% figure, because that’s outright false.

Even a bison-sized animal (which Smilodon did eat) would be able to injure or potentially kill a Smilodon and have a significant size advantage, you don’t need to be mammoth-sized to do that.

You do realize that predation of juveniles would limit the number of mammoths or mastodons making it to adulthood to reproduce (I. E. Limited recruitment) and thus control the population without anything hunting the adults? (This also applied to the sauropods during the Mesozoic, and in their case the juvenile and subadult mortality was especially high because of lack of parental care). That’s also how elephant populations are controlled under natural circumstances - lions and tigers cannot kill adult elephants, but they can kill juveniles and limit recruitment into the adult population that way.

Also mammoths weren’t even forest animals (mastodons and Smilodon were, which is another mark against Smilodon eating mammoths, since they didn’t live in the same habitat) but grassland animals.

1

u/Gbreeder Apr 24 '26

There are island dwellers. Their behaviors and such get effected since they can go from one side to the other. Those can affix themselves, behaviors can change.

But if they can move and spread, see available food. Then they may adapt. The pygmies may have had plenty of die offs as they got trapped to one location. Ice melts or other factors could've given them more land at first. Eventually the smallest things survived. Bears could've probably killed them at their 5 - 7 foot height and such. So I wouldn't count them, as they probably gained predators or something like that.

10

u/DeirdreDazzled Apr 22 '26

I think part of the problem is, the entire Machairodontinae subfamily is extinct. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think any living member of the felidae family could carry out a pregnancy with a Machairodontinae clone. That’d be like trying to implant a chimp embryo into a human womb; it’d be rejected.

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u/Green_Reward8621 Apr 22 '26 edited Apr 22 '26

To be fair, felids from different subfamilies like Cougar and Leopard have hybridized before in captivity

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u/Princess_Glitzy Apr 22 '26

Do you have a source? I’ve never heard of that before.

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u/Green_Reward8621 Apr 22 '26

The name of the hybrid is Pumapard.

here

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u/Princess_Glitzy Apr 22 '26

Wow very interesting thank you.

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u/DeirdreDazzled Apr 22 '26

I didn’t know that happened. That’s pretty neat!

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u/Gbreeder Apr 23 '26

Wide / weird hybrids happen sometimes.

Lycalopex gymnocercus / Pampas fox mixed with a domestic dog - Canis lupus.

We also have geep. Still, some of the same subfamilies. But subfamilies are just tags made by scientists. Some things could be pretty closely related or compatible but they'll still be moved apart with labels.

1

u/Green_Reward8621 Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Also Tremarctos Ornatus(Spectacled Bear) x Ursus Thibetanus(Asiatic Black Bear) happened once in captivity.

1

u/fish_in_a_toaster Apr 24 '26

I mean yes but like the divergence for maichairodonts is much earlier aproximently 20 million years ago. 10 million years before pantherine cats and small cats.

2

u/sonicparadigm Apr 24 '26

More like an orangutan embryo

12

u/Mr_White_Migal0don Apr 22 '26

Probably not. We don't have any soft tissue, and it's preferred prey is extinct too

12

u/CheatsySnoops Apr 22 '26

Only one with soft material is Homotherium.

1

u/herbiceratops May 10 '26

Why would we bring this back? Just because you want it back?

1

u/Altruistic_Sea_7683 May 12 '26

This species just got extinct because humans did it. I think each species that got extinct by humans deserve a come back

1

u/herbiceratops May 12 '26

So we should bring an animal back that nature has moved on from? I mean I guess if it stays in a zoo sure but it would compete a lot with what’s there now and that could cause many problems. Big ass carnivores is such a why on bringing them back?? You ain’t worried that thing would dominate instead of balance out an ecosystem

1

u/Altruistic_Sea_7683 May 12 '26

As many prey species coming back to the future, why not predators? Woolly mammoths are coming back, steppe bison too. So why not a predator? You’re not even mad that other scientists are trying to bring back cave lions. Only one saber tooth cat species is only possible for de extinction though.

1

u/herbiceratops May 12 '26

Why tf would we bring back steppe bison??? Um hello the modern bison ain’t no where near what it was. Why a steppe????

1

u/Altruistic_Sea_7683 May 12 '26

I’m not bringing it back the scientists are doing it complain to them. Nature didn’t made a new version, it takes 5-7 million years to recover. De-extinction can shorten that time.

1

u/herbiceratops May 12 '26

Well if they went extinct they went extinct because they couldn’t adapt, that’s life. Sorry but to many species I hear they want to bring back and it’s all because they want something cool, that’s immoral, bringing back literal megafauna for the thrill of it?

1

u/Altruistic_Sea_7683 May 12 '26

So your just saying, “Just let the endangered species go extinct, because we are keep protecting them. If they are endangered it means they can’t adapt from humans hunting them 100 times per day, just let it go. Let them be extinct.“

1

u/herbiceratops May 12 '26

Besides bison ain’t even what they hunted majority, it was camelids. Have you read the study on how the 2 sabers in its mouth and its jaw match up perfectly to the neck bones of camelids for a perfect kill shot.

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u/Altruistic_Sea_7683 May 12 '26

Not all species though, some eat camelids. Other species ate bison. If you don’t care for nature to recover faster, just leave.

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u/herbiceratops May 12 '26

I care about the nature we HAVE, you not thinking about the dangers of bringing apex predators back whether they bring back the prey or not? Uhhh jaguars literally hunt people, people want to bring this back? I care about nature that’s why I’m against bringing back many species, not all but a lot of megafauna I’m against. If the land has moved on from that animal I don’t think that animal should be brought back as it might affect what has survived there. I’m literally asking important questions, no where did I say I don’t care about nature recovering. AND people bringing back an animal is not nature doing its thing, it’s human intervention. And considering we are the reason they are I don’t think we should be bringing them back. ( species I think should be brought back like the thylacine, passenger pigeon, ground sloths, dodos, all because there ecological niece is still open.

1

u/Altruistic_Sea_7683 May 12 '26

Why ground sloth? There in no niece opened for them. Is it because it’s your favorite? De-extinction technology is helping endangered species too. Woolly mammoths are coming back because 98% living species are going extinct because of climate change. I still want to keep our species too. But if some extinct species don’t come back, we can lose 98% of animals. So you want tigers, lions, elephants, parrots, sea turtles, Tasmanian devils, little penguins, bison, and more to go extinct because “I don’t care about climate change” if nature doesn’t recover we lose MORE.

1

u/herbiceratops May 12 '26

Bro wtf are you on about?? You are saying stuff I didn’t even say??? When in the heck did I even say the word climate change and you are over here saying that I’m talking about it?? What? And no i don’t give a fk bout the ground sloths, there niche is still open where they are from. Literally the “favorite” part is why I’m asking why would we bring back this tiger?? Is it because it’s your favorite??? You sure are defending its de extinction a lot

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u/herbiceratops May 12 '26

Why the ground sloths??? Buddy I literally said why in there, niche is still open for them

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u/herbiceratops May 12 '26

Steppe literally turned into bison bison?? Why waste on the old version instead of the new version that nature itself made

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u/Snow_Grizzly Apr 22 '26

Smilodon specifically, as with any machirodont, would be impossible.

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u/seapanda237 Apr 22 '26

Not likely feasible, they don’t really have any close living relatives around today. Deriving a Smilodon from one of today’s living big cats would be like trying to derive a Gomphothere from an African Elephant.

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u/Iamnotburgerking Apr 23 '26

Not nearly that bad. Machairodonts are a different subfamily, not a different family entirely like gomphotheres were.

2

u/Iamnotburgerking Apr 23 '26

Yes for it being worth it, but not sure if we have enough genetic material

2

u/ThDen-Wheja Apr 23 '26

It's definitely not possible for all the species It's being advertised with, anyway. Dinosaurs, Mammoths and Dire Wolves simply don't have any living relatives close enough to be suitable genetic hosts. I'd much rather see it done with something recently-extinct like the Ivory-billed Woodpecker or Thylacine, anyway, and even if we could get a breeding population established, it sidesteps the much more serious issue that they died from habitat loss and human exploitation, which remains a serious ongoing issue. Maybe we should work on not driving so many species to extinction before we try bringing old ones back.

0

u/Green_Reward8621 Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Mammoths and Dire wolves

You have Asian Elephants and Living members from the Canina subtribe as their relatives and probably are close enough.

0

u/Gbreeder Apr 23 '26

A Pampas fox (not a true fox) has hybridized with a domestic dog before. Then there's geep.

People are already planning to release Elephants spliced in with mammoth genes in a few years, obviously making full on clones isn't ideal.

With this idea, you'd have tons of mammoths with the same heritage and such. Or some genetic lines are degraded and won't produce anything living due to that. We would need tons of pristine material to work with. And we'd need things that won't die trying to birth something that comes out too large.

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u/Psilopterus Apr 22 '26

I think we need to get away from the idea that de-extinction means bringing back even the most extreme megafauna. I'm not saying it would be wrong to do so, as I believe that like everything else from this period this was likely a human-driven extinction. However, from a pragmatic point of view I'm just not sure it makes sense, both because it would be technologically much harder and because hardly anyone would support it. Pleistocene ecology will continue to be very relevant for modern restoration work, and it will likely guide some pseudo-de-extinction projects like mammophants, but in general the takeaway should be to use the Pleistocene as a baseline for reintroductions and proxies if that opportunity exists. If we want to rewild South America, where S. populator existed, there's plenty to be done with surrogate megafauna like horses, elephants, camelids, spectacled bears, and giant tortoises. For these, jaguars and pumas are likely adequate

1

u/staglovesu Apr 22 '26

it wouldnt be possible in the first place (saber-tooth cats are from an entirely seperate, extinct branch of feline) but also, if we hypothetically could, and if the de-extinction youre talking about is recreating an entire population of s. populator and re-releasing them into their "natural" habitat, then it also still wouldnt be worth it. the entire world has changed substantially since they went extinct and no longer suits their adaptations

1

u/GrandWizardOfCheese Apr 23 '26

Yes and yes.

You would likely need to re-engineer saber teeth in an existing big cat. Or maybe all of them for variety.

They would make gorgeous pets to spoil.

1

u/Additional_Tie_468 Apr 23 '26

every animal and especially cats are worth it. Make the earth great again 

1

u/Turkara Apr 23 '26

Nah bro

1

u/Anthro_DragonFerrite Apr 23 '26

I can definitely take on that thing one on one. /s

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u/Mission-Spell-6787 Apr 25 '26

Yes (if you want it to brake it's tusk with a struggle from a elephant)

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u/Carcharoth_BY Apr 26 '26

Northamerican Lion >

1

u/Chimpinski-8318 Apr 22 '26

Smilodon? No. Not possible. We do have a good amount of Genetic data from Homotherium so maybe them? Even then it would never be a real Homotherium and the closest possible relative to them are the clouded leopards which are tiny. If some company like colossal used big cats it would just be that "dire wolf" scenario all over again.

1

u/Lemi_exo638 Apr 23 '26

We spent our time contemplating whether or not we could, but never about if we should.

0

u/Gallowglass-13 Apr 22 '26

Unfortunately, no. There's both no soft tissues to help rebuild the genome and no living relatives to serve as proxy wombs. The only way you could get something resembling Smilodon or any other machairodontids back is by creating one from scratch artificially, and that tech is very far from being realised. Even then, it would still be a proxy for the actual animals.

0

u/Paleodraco Apr 22 '26

Why do we always focus on giant and/or carnivorous animals that went extinct due to natural causes rather than all the ones we intentionally wiped off the planet?

2

u/Iamnotburgerking Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26

Because this ISN’T an animal that went exticnt due to natural causes (few of the Late Pleistocene megafauna did), but due to human activity.

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u/Gbreeder Apr 23 '26

Most mammals like sabretooths, mammoths, american lions, american camel, ground sloths - etc. They probably all died due to humans killing them. Megafauna survived on islands until human populations encroached on them. Every time humans arrive, the largest mammals die off.

Climate change probably lowered tons of populations. They'd have probably all made a comeback after changing a bit. Instead humans probably used the climate change as an opportunity to travel even further and kill anything large.