Simulated bite marks [digital simulation]

Though real Sabertooth cats are long extinct, anatomist Frank Mendel and his team plan to build a scale model of the head and jaws of a 700-pound Smilodon fatalis to reproduce the predator´s deadly bite. They want to measure the forces necessary for the teeth to penetrate the skin, muscle, and other tissues of a recently dead herbivore, and use the data in a new computer-aided design (CAD) program they´re developing. The CAD program, the Vertebrate Analyzer (VA), could do for muscle and bone what similar programs have done for bridges, buildings, and automobiles - let scientists probe the form and function of a complex object on the computer. Ultimately, it could shed light on human bone and muscle ailments, as well as the lives of long-gone exotic creatures.