250 Francs CFA Smilodon

The Smilodon — commonly called the saber-toothed cat, though it was no closer to modern cats than a lion is to a cheetah — went extinct roughly 10,000 years ago, most likely due to the simultaneous collapse of its large prey species at the end of the Pleistocene. Senegal has no paleontological connection to the genus whatsoever; this is a bullion-adjacent collector piece aimed squarely at the international numismatic market, part of a broader trend of African CFA-issuing states licensing exotic wildlife themes to European minting houses.