During the dinosaur age, some were just massive. Why are modern land mammals, and others so tiny. Comparing a modern tiger to a sabertooth is no contest.
In: Biology
Many reasons, and not all of them are known, or certain. One possible reason is the size of the continents. Large animals need lots of room to roam. When the dinosaurs first appeared, all of the continents had come together in one super continent call Pangaea. Even when Pangaea started to break up into the continents we have today, it was slow and there were multiple intermediate continents along the way. By the time the continents were fully broken up, the dinosaurs were on their way out. Less land means less room to roam to find food. It also meant major changes to the climate, possibly less friendly to large animals. The asteroid that killed them off may actually have just been the final knock-out punch for an already declining population.
Another thing to note, the saber tooth cats did not coexist with the dinosaurs; they came much later after the dinosaur extinction event. In fact, there were many large mammals (megafauna) that came after the dinosaurs all died. Not as big as the biggest dinosaurs, but still big. Woolly mammoths, woolly rhinos, giant sloths, giant deer, cave bears, and all sorts of massive animals bigger than their modern cousins. These went extinct for different reasons than the big dinosaurs, most notably from human hunting. Not the only reason (probably), but the dinosaurs never had to deal with humans, so it’s definitely different.
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