Overall, the skull of "Machairodus" was noticeably narrow compared with the skulls of extant pantherine cats, and the orbits were relatively small. The canines were long, thin and flattened from side to side but broad from front to back like the blade of a knife, as in "Homotherium". The front and back edges of the canines were serrated when they first grew, but these serrations were worn down in the first few years of the animal's life. However, a skull of "M. horribilis" was shown to be similar to extant pantherines in some cranial characters, suggesting new evidence for the diversity of killing bites even within in the largest saber-toothed carnivorans, offering an additional mechanism for the mosaic evolution leading to functional and morphological diversity in sabertooth cats.