When paleontology meets genomics: complete mitochondrial genomes of two saber-toothed cats’ species (Felidae: Machairodontinae)

Within the Machairodontinae subfamily, commonly referred to as saber-toothed cats, it is worth noting that only two species, namely <i>Homotherium latidens</i>, recognized as the scimitar-toothed cat, and <i>Smilodon populator</i>, renowned as the saber-toothed tiger, possess partial mitochondrial genomes accessible in the NCBI database. These sequences, however, do not include the mitogenome control region (mtDNA control region) and have several gaps in their genes, including protein-coding genes (PCGs) that are widely used in phylogenetic analysis. In this study, we aimed to obtain a complete assembly of the mitogenomes of these two species from next-generation sequencing data available at NCBI's SRA. The <i>de novo</i> assemblies showed complete mitogenomes with 17,323bp (<i>H. latidens</i>) and 16,769 bp (<i>S. populator</i>), both with 13 PCGs, 22tRNAs, two rRNAs and the mtDNA control region, with all genes following the standard order and position of most vertebrate mitogenomes. Despite being generally very similar to previous studies, our phylogeny and molecular dating reveals an earliest divergence between North American and North Sea <i>H. latidens</i> specimens which may be related to an Early Pleistocene migration across Beringia.