The sabre-tooth cat, Smilodon ranged over both North and South America. Homotherium had an even greater distribution, located in Africa, Eurasia, and North America, and of course the newest sabre-tooth cat,Xenosmilus, has been recently recovered in North America. Such a wide variety of distribution of the sabre-tooth cat is a result of landbridges. Landbridges, found in the Northern hemispere, included the Bering landbridge between Canada and Siberia, and the Arctic landbridge between Greenland and Scandanavia. Landbridges betweeen Eurasia and South Africa did not appear until later in the Tertiary, as did the connection from North America and South America (Condie 1998).

These landbridges are what provided the early ancestors of the sabre-toothed cat access to various continents, thus showing why there is such a wide distribution of the sabre-tooth cat.

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