Wanhsien tiger ~

[GuateGojira]

(12-14-2014, 01:44 AM)'Pckts' Wrote: @Guate
In regards to this statement
"Just one final thing, don't confuse the Longdan "tiger" (Panthera zdanskyi) with the Ngandong tiger (Panthera tigris soloensis). The first one is an earlier relative of the tiger, a sister species, that existed in China in the beginning of the Pleistocene. The Ngandong tiger was a true tiger that existed in Java in the late Pleistocene. In one occasion, Asad (the liar of the lion fans) tried to create a confusion about this, but I destroyed him and cleared the confusion. I put this again, just in case."

What happened to the Longdan tiger? Are there no big cat species that is a direct ancester to it? Are all tigers directly related to the Ngandong Tiger, than?
 

 

According with Mazák et al. (2010), this sister species of the tiger evolved from the same ancestor, but formed a different species. There are several fossils labeled as "tigers" in China, all of them teeth and fragments, but none has been correctly studied and are probably from other species. We most remember also Panthera youngi, anteriorly labeled as a posible "lion", but now classified as a different species or a relative of the tiger or the leopard, like the more basal Panthera palaeosinensis, which has a great resemblance to the lion and the leopard, but in Asia. I found very difficult to believe that three Panthera species lived together in China at about 2.55-2.16 MYA. So, I think and this is my personal guess, that the "tigers" in mainland, before the arrival of the Sunda ones, were a mix between a basal tiger species and those of the Longdan species, and I also think that Panthera youngi was not a lion, like Harrrinton think, but probably also part of the basal tiger species. Based in the more complete fossils of the Sunda shelf, I think that the "pure" tigers evolved in this are, in Java, at about 2-1.6 MYA, and they suppressed the old form in China, like the basic theory state. After all, the fossils in Java are barely different than those from the modern species, based in the description of Brongersman.

I can finish with this idea: The basal tiger in China and the other cats (zdanskyi and youngi) from this time were probably of the same species (deeper studies can confirm, or un-confirm, this), the one extirpated by the true tiger, that fully evolved in the Sunda. I put this theory, based in the scanty and confusing fossil record in China and the relative more complete record in Java.
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