“Their wide-open mouth, armed with transparent, saber-like teeth, effectively disappear in the surrounding blackness,” said Dr. Webb.

Saber teeth took this tradeoff to the extreme, Rayfield and her colleagues report in Current Biology, becoming about as good as they could be at puncturing prey, ultimately sacrificing durability.

Those carnivores included Smilodon, better known as the saber-toothed tiger — and its lesser-known cousin Homotherium latidens, the scimitar-toothed cat.While these are two of the most iconic ...