Saving the Sabre Tooth (Episode 3.6)

***Saving the Sabre Tooth*** is the sixth episode of Series 3 and the thirty third episode of Prehistoric Earth: A Natural History.

## Synopsis

The team travels back in time to Early Pleistocene South America to rescue *Smilodon*, the most well-known prehistoric cat of all time, as well as a species of predatory birds known as Terror Birds.

## Plot

Allen exploring to see how the park is doing taking care of many prehistoric animals he has been rescuing from dinosaurs to the earliest ancestors of mankind. They walks with his dog Caine and one of the park's resident Cheetahs as he has big cats on his mind. He even heads down to look at the park's first prehistoric cats and eventually has an idea of what he is going to rescue next from prehistory. He then goes to his boss Joanna who sitting her office waiting for information from Allen and he eventually tells her that he is going to rescue the most famous prehistoric cat of all time: Smilodon, as he shows her the animal's skull. He points out that he will also rescue a large carnivorous species of bird called Phorusrhacos also known as the Terror Bird.

The team gets their stuff together as they open the portal and head to Early Pleistocene South America 1 million years ago to rescue both Smilodon and the Terror Birds. The group arrive right into a herd of South American ungulates called Toxodon. Allen then spots some wallowing in the water like a Hippo as he knows that Toxodon could be dangerous like Hippopotamuses. The team opens the portal and gets a dozen Toxodon back to the park as well as a highly aggressive male that chases them in jeep as they get him back to the park and continues to find the predators the group has come to rescue. Out on the South American plains they spotted a Phorusrhacos chasing down a Smilodon cub so it could eat.

Another Terror Birds arrives and they surround the cub until it was rescued by an adult male Smilodon who scares the birds away. Allen noticed that the male has a broken saber and decided to call him Half-Tooth. The team followed Half-Tooth and the cub back to a pride of Smilodon who were relaxing with Half-Tooth as the clan's leader. Allen and the group explores Half-Tooth's territory and encountered many different animals such as a large species of glyptodon related to Armadillos with a spiky tail club called Doedicurus and another species of ungulate called Macrauchenia who where grazing on grass. Not too far away a breeding pair of Terror Birds were watching the herd and waiting to attack.

The team a piece of meat to get the attention of the predatory birds and ties a rope around the meat as the team sets up the portal. Allen throw the meat on the ground so that the Terror Birds will be enticed by the piece of meat they already can smell. The pair approach the jeep and they begin to drive with the two Terror Birds behind them and travels through the portal successfully rescuing the Terror Bird from extinction. After getting the Terror Birds to their enclosure the team goes back to rescue Half-Tooth and his clan. They found them relaxing and enjoying the warm breeze of the grasslands until Half-Tooth spotted two Smilodon brothers arriving to takeover the clan and prepares to fight them as the rest of the pride retreats.

Half-Tooth backs down as he was no match for the brothers, as the two eventually spotted the team not far away and begin to attack the humans. Ruby tries to shoot her rifle only to miss it as Allen's dog Caine fights off against the two cats. They manage escape from the attack and Allen decides to split the team into two groups with Rebecca leading the group that will keep an eye the clan while Allen leads the other group to follow Half-Tooth's trail. Rebecca agrees as the two groups split up. Allen and the first group eventually caught up to Half-Tooth and follows him into the scrub forest on the edges of his territory.

They eventually came a small group of Dodicurus which two males where fighting a mate with armored bodies and their spiked tail clubs. Ruby tries to shoot at them until Allen tells her that their armor to thick for bullets. He sets up and opens the portal and gets a small group of Doedicurus back to the park along with a group of small Glyptodonts called Glyptodon as they continue following Half-Half into the scrub forest. Meanwhile Rebecca and the second group watches over Half-Tooth's clan as it was now taken over by the brothers who were marking their new territory and eventually tries to kill the cubs. Back in the scrub forest Allen and the group follows Half-Tooth deepers into the forest as his daughter Crystal suddenly spots an enormous species of ground sloth called Megatherium which a pair of them were grazing on treetops using their claws to hook down the branches to get to the leaves.

Allen gets the two ground sloths back to the park but were followed by three juveniles that were dwelling nearby. After rescuing Megatherium Allen and his group keeps following Half-Tooth and his trail. Back on the plains Rebecca and her group see one of the females trying to hide the clan's last two cub from Smilodon brothers as they continue marking their new territory. Later they watch the females hunting a herd of Macrauchenia on the plains as they stalked and waited to attack like a lion. After stalking the herd for two hours, one of the females leaps out of the grass and chases the herd followed by the other females of the pride.

After a few minutes of pursuing the Macrauchenia herd, one of the females leaps on to one of the herd members' back and restains it until one of the females kills it by biting the Macrauchenia's neck with her massive canine teeth. As Becca and the team watch the pride feasting on the carcass a few Terror Birds appear as one steals a piece of meat from the carcass. Eventually the Smilodon pride ate enough and leaves as the Terror Birds continue to feast on the Macrauchenia carcass. Rebecca and the group gathers a dozen Macrauchenia and a herd of South American horses called Hippidion and gets them back to the park as they continue watching the clan. Allen and the his whole group still follows Half-Tooth as his territory was already marked by the brothers and found corpses of the last cubs signaling that the brothers' takeover is complete.

Around dawn of the next day Allen uses binoculars to watches Half-Tooth hunting a male Macrauchenia in the low light while Ruby heads out hunting the same Macrauchenia Half-Tooth is hunting so she can have it for her collection of hunting trophies. As Half-Tooth stalks the Macrauchenia waiting to attack grazing herbivore, a Megatherium arrives and crashes through the undergrowth. Half-Tooth leaps out from the undergrowth and chase the Macrauchenia as Ruby fires her rifile and missed again. Half-Tooth was too weak to chase the herbivore due to lack of food, as he continues hunting that morning and eventually spots a female Macrauchenia and her calf who separated from the herd grazing on vegetation. Suddenly the Macrauchenia and her calf were attacked by a Terror Bird who eventually kills the youngster with it's sharp beak.

Half-Tooth scares the bird away as he scavenges the kill it left behind during the attack. Not far away Rebecca and the second group watches the clan who now accepts the brother since the cubs are now dead and mates with them. Some of the juvenile females practice their hunting skills and attack a Doedicurus nearby until it walked away. Later the pride were feasting on a Toxodon one of the females hunted as the Terror Birds waited for their chance to feast on the carcass. However Rebecca then spots a Megatherium heading towards the pride their kill so it can have the meat from the carcass despite being a herbivore.

One of the brothers defends the carcass from the giant, but the Megatherium kills the brother by swapping him with it's massive claws and the clan abandons the Toxodon carcass to the gigantic herbivore. Allen and the first group keeps following Half-Tooth who has reappeared in his old territory and begins to mark as one of the brothers was already killed. Back at the clan, the second group watches as things for the remaining brother goes badly as the females become unsettled again. Eventually Half-Tooth returned to his territory and the two groups of the team rejoins as the observe Half-Tooth preparing to challenge the remaining male for leadership of the clan again. Half-Tooth then approaches and the two cats fights for the leadership of the clan and ended with the male becoming injured as Half-Tooth reclaims his crown and become the clan's leader again.

The team opens the portal and brings Half-Tooth and his pride back to the park as Ruby kills the injured brother and takes him as one of her hunting trophies. They put the clan into the Saber-Tooth enclosure where they begin their new life in the park. As he notice that the Early Pleistocene was a time when Smilodon was in it's prime while the Terror Birds were already starting to go extinct, he decides to go rescue the Smilodon that lived in North America and the animals that migrated to North America during the Great American Interchange by going back 30,000 years to rescue the North American Smilodon of the fatalis species. Then they arrived they rescued another species of Glyptodont called Glyptotherium and a North American species Llama called Hemiauchenia. Along the way they also rescued three species of North American Ground Sloths such as Nothrotheriops, Eremotherium, and Paramylodon and a North American Capybara called Neochoerus.

Later as Rebecca follows some Smilodon tracks she was confronted by female Smilodon who was upset because Rebecca's sight until Allen contacts her with his walkie-talkie. They eventually spotted her hunting a White-Tailed Deer, until it picked up her scent and she fails to catch it. As they were riding the jeep through the plains they spotted a male Smilodon hunting, Allen and Rebecca decided to tranqulize the male then do the same for the female. Rebecca uses a tranqulizer gun and shoots a dart at the male and attacks them in the jeep, luckliy they escape and took ten minutes for the drug to work. They eventually tranqulize the female as well and prepares to return to the park until Allen happens upon a cave and goes into investigate.

He sees something sleeping and his dog whimpers a bit and revealed to be another species of Ground Sloth called Megalonyx who was stalked by Allen's presents and approached him. However he manages to rescue the sloth and it's mate from the brink of extinction along with a Pleistocene species of Tapir called California Tapirs. They even prepare to rescue the Gracilis species of Smilodon from Mexico 10,000 years ago when the Smilodon was going extinct due to the prey it hunted disappeared. They arrive and they could find any thrace of Smilodon explores the enviornment to find one. Rebecca then spots a dead Smilodon cubs knowing that a mother is close by.

Allen sets up a camera trap to see if any Smilodon pass by as the team sets camp for the night. They day he found the camera toppled over and has a mammalian smell and believe they found a Smilodon. He looks at the recording from last night and found a male there, and they try to track him down. They eventually found the male who was injured from a fight and was brought to the park so Rebecca can operate on the Smilodon's injuries as they also brought a female with them so they could mate and have some cubs.

## Animals

* California Tapir
* Doedicurus
* Eremotherium
* Glyptodon
* Glyptotherium
* Hemiauchenia
* Hippidion
* Macrauchenia
* Megalonyx
* Megatherium
* Neochoerus
* Nothrotheriops
* Paramylodon
* Phorusrhacos
* Smilodon
* Toxodon

## Time

* Early Pleistocene - 1,000,000 BC
* Late Pleistocene - 30,000 BC
* Late Pleistocene - 10,000 BC