Smilodon: the iconic sabertooth

Radiographs Reveal Exceptional Forelimb Strength in the Sabertooth Cat, Smilodon fatalis

BACKGROUND The sabertooth cat, Smilodon fatalis, was an enigmatic predator without a true living analog. Their elongate canine teeth were more vulnerable to fracture than those of modern felids, making it imperative for them to immobilize prey with their forelimbs when making a kill. As a result, their need for heavily muscled forelimbs likely exceeded that of modern felids and thus should be r...

Iconic Agreement

Two apparently contradictory insights about sign language can be made compatible within a formal semantic analysis: (i) the claim that directional verbs incorporate agreement markers/pronouns (e.g. Lillo-Martin and Meier 2011); (ii) the observation that directional verbs have an iconic component (e.g. Liddell 2003). I sketch formal rules that integrate iconic requirements with standard semantic...

Coincidence or evidence: was the sabretooth cat Smilodon social?

Iconic Features

Sign languages are known to display the same general grammatical properties as spoken languages ('Universal Grammar'), but also to make greater use of iconic mechanisms. In Schlenker et al., to appear, it was argued that loci (= positions in signing space corresponding to discourse referents) can have an iconic semantics, in the sense that certain geometric relations among loci (subset and rela...

Protein Structure Alignment through a Contact Topology Profile using SABERTOOTH

The contact vector (CV) of a protein structure is one of the simplest and most condensed descriptions of protein structure available. It lists the number of contacts each amino acid has with the surrounding structure and has frequently been used e.g. to derive approximative folding energies in protein folding analysis. The CV, however, is a lossy structure representation, as it does not contain...