New fossils indicate that the saber-toothed tiger of ancient times might have been killed by our early ancestors, according to BBC News.
The homo heidelbergensis were the first human ancestors to use wooden tools like spears for hunting deer.
But the early humans might have used the tools for more than just hunting, as recent evidence suggests that they had to defend themselves from predators too, like the ancient big cats.
Researchers discovered feline teeth and bones at a site in Germany that held "the oldest discovery of human spears."
"We can say that the humans - and the sabre toothed cat - were living 300,000 years ago in the same area, in the same landscape," said Jordi Serangeli with of the University of Tubingen in Germany. "The humans were hunters but they were not alone; they had to defend themselves from all the big carnivores."
Serangeli and his colleagues published their research in the Journal of Human Evolution.
"The discovery illustrates the possible day-to-day challenges that the Schöningen hominins (a region specific ancestor) would have faced and suggests that the wooden spears were not necessarily only used for hunting, but possibly also as a weapon for self-defence," Serangeli said in the report.
Scientists are now looking at the possibility that early humans might have actually been behind the big cat extinction.
