Schultz, et al., 1970 Nimravidae is an extinct family of carnivorans, sometimes known as false saber-toothed cats, whose fossils are found in North America and Eurasia.

The middle ear of true cats is housed in an external structure called an auditory bulla, which is separated by a septum into two chambers.

[7] Although some nimravids physically resembled the saber-toothed cats, such as Smilodon, they were not closely related,[8] but evolved a similar form through parallel evolution.

[9] They also had a downward-projecting flange on the front of the mandible as long as the canine teeth, a feature which also convergently evolved in the saber-toothed sparassodont Thylacosmilus.

A 2021 study has shown that a sizeable number of species developed feline-like morphologies in addition to saber-toothed taxa.

[10] The family Nimravidae was named by American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope in 1880,[11] with the type genus as Nimravus.

The family was assigned to Fissipedia by Cope (1889); to Caniformia by Flynn and Galiano (1982); to Aeluroidea by Carroll (1988); to Feliformia by Bryant (1991); and to Carnivoramorpha, by Wesley-Hunt and Werdelin (2005).

Some nimravids evolved into large, toothed, cat-like forms with massive flattened upper canines and accompanying mandibular flanges.