Fearsome sabre-toothed cats may have had a tender side. The prehistoric predators risked damaging their powerful jaws and teeth during hunts, but a study of their fossils suggests injured individuals could then rely on their peers for food.

Urban Los Angeles is home to the tar pits at Rancho La Brea . For most of the last 40,000 years, sticky tar has trapped and preserved animals wandering across this landscape, providing a window into the animals of the Pleistocene period.

What’s really special …