The ancient, 8-foot-long salmon 🐟


	June 16, 2025

Original photo by Marek Rybar/ Shutterstock

Scientists have found fossils of a "sabertooth salmon" that could grow 8 feet long.

Before humans roamed the Americas in great numbers, the continent was home to some of the Earth's largest animals: the massive American mastodons of the Yukon, the giant ground sloths of South America, and human-sized armadillo-related creatures called glyptodons. But even before these impressive specimens, another beast of tremendous proportions plied the waters of the Pacific Northwest. Its scientific name is Oncorhynchus rastrosus, but it's known as the "sabertooth salmon." The sabertooth salmon looked similar to the pink-hued fish found at most supermarkets today, except for one major thing — it was up to 8 feet long.

This giant salmon's natural range included what's now California, Oregon, and Washington. Much like modern salmon, it primarily lived in the Pacific Ocean while spawning in bodies of fresh water along the coasts. The fish gets its gruesome name from its teeth, which — unlike those of the similarly named saber-toothed tiger — stuck out like spikes on its snout. Scientists believe these teeth were primarily used in mating displays, fighting, and building redds (aka nesting sites). While this massive salmon went extinct about 5 million years ago, long before humans arrived on the continent, the surviving members of its genus, such as the Chinook and coho salmon, are still some of the most important and beloved species of the Pacific Northwest.

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		Numbers Don't Lie

The saber-toothed tiger is not a tiger.

One of the most fearsome predators of the Pleistocene Epoch (1.8 million to 10,000 years ago) was the saber-toothed tiger. Despite its popular name, this feline, known in scientific circles as "smilodon," isn't closely related to the modern tiger at all. Although they share the same family (felidae), smilodon is a member of the now-extinct machairodontinae sub-family, which includes other big-toothed cats from around the world, such as the Homotherium serum (scimitar-toothed cat). But while "tiger" is a bit of a misnomer, "saber-toothed" is right on the money, since the smilodon sported canines that grew to 7 inches long (more than twice the length of a modern tiger's). Modern humans and "saber-toothed cats," as scientists now call them, likely co-existed for some time, and scientists are still working to understand exactly why these formidable felines went extinct.

Today's edition of Interesting Facts was written by Darren Orf and edited by Bess Lovejoy.