We’re continuing our expedition to the frozen tundra of the Arctic with more new LEGO sets from the LEGO City Arctic Expedition theme released on June 1st. In our review of 60195 Arctic Mobile Exploration Base, we took a close look at the new woolly mammoth. 60193 Arctic Air Transport is the smallest set that includes the saber-toothed “tiger” at $39.99 in the US (49.99 CAD in Canada | £24.99 in the UK), with 277 pieces and 2 minifigures.

First, let’s get some taxonomy and nomenclature issues out of the way. While the mammoth is rather evidently a mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius or one of its close relatives), it’s less clear what the “saber-toothed ‘tigers'” in these new Arctic sets actually depict. From more than 40 million years ago until the last Ice Age barely 12,000 years ago, there was a broad range of carnivorous creatures with long canine teeth, none of which were closely related to modern tigers in Asia. As a result, most palaeontologists use the common name “saber-toothed cat” to refer to the true felines that had saber-shaped canine teeth (like the iconic and aptly named Smilodon fatalis from the La Brea Tarpits), and generically “saber-tooth” to refer to the full range of creatures across many orders, genera, and species who had such teeth — even including a few marsupial saber-tooths! Thus, we’ll be avoiding the term “tiger” in favor of saber-toothed “cat” or just saber-tooth. If your eyes haven’t completely glazed over yet due to all this taxonomic minutiae, we’ll return to this point when taking a close look at the saber-tooth in this LEGO set.

Read our hands-on review of the new LEGO City Arctic 60193 Arctic Air Transport