Sabertooth Homotherium is a canid – not a cat.

Don’t forget convergence.
We’ve already seen several parallel origins for ‘bears‘, ‘whales‘, ‘turtles‘ and ‘tetrapods‘. Adding traditionally omitted taxa to a cladogram can deliver unexpected results.

As always competing cladograms with a similar taxon list are not only welcome, but needed for topology confirmation, refutation or modification.

Homotherium latidens
(Owen 1846, Anton et al 2021, Late Pliocene to Pleistocene, 4mya to 12kya, MNHN.F.PET 2000 a, b) is traditionally considered a wide-ranging cat adapted to running down, rather than ambushing prey. In the LRT Homotherium nests with the aardwolf, Proteles, in the canid clade, converging with sabertooths like Smilodon and felids like Panthera with retractable claws. Note the long rostrum and last tooth anterior to the orbit.

When added to
the large reptile tree (LRT, 2257 taxa, subset Fig 3) Homotherium nested with the aardwolf, Proteles, both derived from Canis, the wolf. The palate, the rostrum, the tooth row all contributed to this phylogenetic shift. Note: both canids and felids are derived from more primitive taxa with extra large canines. So this trait is still in their genes, just waiting to come out again.

This also puts another nail in the genomic coffin that concludes, without fossils, that the first dichotomy dividing the clade Carnivora was between felids and canids. Cats and wolves are derived members of the Carnivora (Fig 3). Primitive members include coatimundis (Nasua), the most lemur-like of all carnivorans.

References
Anton M, Siliceo G, Pastor JF and Salesa MJ 2021. Concealed weapons: A revised reconstruction of the facial anatomy and life appearance of the sabre-toothed cat Homotherium latidens (Felidae, Machairodontinae). Quaternary Science Reviews 284: 107471, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2022.107471
Owen R 1846. A history of British fossil mammals, and bird. J. Van Voorst, London.

wiki/Homotherium