Very Rare Highly Collectible Vintage (1960s) W M Otto Bronze Smilodon La Brea Tar Pits Saber Toothed Tiger (3/ 7.5cm, 193g).

Marvellous collectible cold cast bronze educational figure. Modelled on restoration from skeletons excavated by the Los Angeles County Museum. In perfect condition. Please browse all 12 sets of photographs attached for size, weight and condition as they are self explanatory.

Scientists have learned that the sabertooth cat first appeared in the archaeological record two million years ago. Sabertooths ranged widely throughout North and South America and are related to modern cats. However, no real descendents of the sabertooth cat are alive today.

These cats were tenacious and adaptable animals, thriving for hundreds of thousands of years before their time finally came to an end. Saber-toothed cats went extinct between 8,000 and 10,000 years ago, as the ice age drew to an end and their prey began to die out.

Smilodon is a relatively recent sabertooth. It went extinct about 10,000 years ago. Fossils have been found all over North America and Europe.

These figures were originally part of a set of 14 gift shop souvenirs at the La Brea Tar Pits Museum (Page Museum) in Los Angeles, USA, in the 1960s. They were a set of 14 different pot metal prehistoric mammals based upon fossils found in the tar. The figures were beautifully sculpted by William Otto. They are extremely hard to find today. The Sabre Tooth Tiger from this collection is about 3" x 1 1/4" in size cans is extremely hard to source in good condition.

The saber–toothed cats or sabretooth cats are some of the best known and most popular extinct animals. They are among the most impressive carnivores that ever have lived. These cats had long canines and jaws which opened wider than modern cats.

There are none living today: they are extinct. The extinctions followed climate change, as the world cooled and grassland took over from woodland in the Pliocene and Pleistocene.

Smilodon is one of the best known saber-toothed predators and prehistoric mammals. Although commonly known as the saber-toothed tiger, it was not closely related to the tiger or other modern cats. Smilodon originally lived in the Americas. The hundreds of specimens obtained from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles constitute the largest collection of Smilodon fossils in the world.

Overall, Smilodon was more robustly built than any extant cat, with particularly well-developed forelimbs and exceptionally long upper canine teeth. It’s jaw had a bigger gape than that of modern cats, and its upper canines were slender and fragile, being adapted for precision killing.

Smilodon was around the size of modern big cats, but was more robustly built.

The most widely known genus of sabre-toothed cats is Smilodon, the “sabre-toothed tiger.” It was about the size of the modern African lion and represents the peak of sabre-tooth evolution.

The bones of many Smilodon specimens have been recovered from the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California; the cats were apparently mired in the tar as they preyed on other animals that had also become trapped.

William Otto Emerson (March 2, 1856 – December 24, 1940) was an American landscape painter and an ornithologist who was a founding member of the Cooper Ornithological Club.

Emerson was born near Chicago but moved to Placerville, California in 1870 and then went to study art at the School of Design in San Francisco under Virgil Williams. He then went to Paris and studied at Académie Julian studying under William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Jules Joseph Lefebvre.

After returning to California he lived in the Bay area and painted numerous landscapes and still lifes. A founding member of the Cooper Ornithological Society for which he served as president twice, he designed the cover of the first issue of Condor.

Emerson also took an interest in bird & flower photography, and collected bird specimens, nearly 6000 skins were donated to the California Academy of Sciences. He died in Hayward, USA, on 24th December 1940 aged 74.

The La Brea Tar Pits is an active paleontological research site in urban Los Angeles. Hancock Park was formed around a group of tar pits where natural asphalt (also called asphaltum, bitumen, or pitch; brea in Spanish) has seeped up from the ground for tens of thousands of years. Over many centuries, the bones of trapped animals have been preserved. The George C. Page Museum is dedicated to researching the tar pits and displaying specimens from the animals that died there. La Brea Tar Pits is a registered National Natural Landmark.