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(09-06-2016, 08:59 AM)GuateGojira Wrote: I am really impressed that nobody has commented on this last paper!!!
Anyone have read it???
It finally concluded that the cave "lions" are NOT lions at all, that they are they OWN SPECIES!!! That is a very important news, as it close an old debate on this issue.
It is now a fact that although this large Pantherine was of the same clade of lions, it is less related with lions than modern leopards and jaguars.
We should make a special topic for this, and present also an historic description about other old studies on this.
What about the American Lion aren't they related to lions? I mean if their logic is based on that its less related to lions than jaguars and leopards, that doesn't really mean anything, because its not proven lions ever evolved from jaguars or vice versa leopards. Its just an opinion, or theory. I think the evidence is, do the skeletons of the Cave lions resemble actual lions.
Just a little question? How is possible that when Barnett et al. in 2009, proposed that the cave lions were true part of the "lions" family, all the lion-enthusiast used that document like a Bible, but now that a new document of 2016, with far more evidence and better data, from the same persons, that show that these animals are NOT lions, is presented, you simple classified it like an "opinion"? That attitude could sound a little fishy, don't you think?
First of all, what you say that doesn't mean anything, is in fact the most important. The new DNA evidence based in bone AND hair (never used before, because it has never been discovered), show that the cave "lions" split from the "lion clade" more than a million years ago, while the jaguar and leopards separated from the true lions just about 600,000 or 700,000 years, more or less depending of the study. This simply show that these FOUR SPECIES are related but are not the same, and this would be the classification:
It is quite clear what Barnet et al. (2016) have discovered, it is more easy if you read both, the paper of 2009 and now the paper of 2016.
Second, no one have say that lions evolved from jaguars of leopards, nor I or the document. What Dr Barnett and I stated is that these four species are a single "Clade", and represent a subfamily, like for example the modern tiger, the snow leopard and the extinct Longdang "tiger" belongs to the "Tiger clade". This means that they are a subfamily too, but it is very obvious that none of these are ALL tigers, like the four members of the "lion clade" are not all lions.
Finally, it you stick with the skeletons ONLY, in fact, they do not resemble lions at the perfection. The Eurasian cave lions are present in two forms (spelaea and fossilis) and Sotnikova & Nikolskiy (2006) proved that both these forms are different from the modern lion, particularly in the skull. Merriam & Stock (1932) already stated that the American "lion" (Panthera atrox) had lion characteristics, but also jaguar characteristics, which are confirmed by the modern morphological study of Christiansen & Harris (2009). The idea of Hemmer that they were lions is based in simple parallelisms of the skull, but deeper studies from modern scientists showed that none of this taxa resemble 100% lions. In fact, the skeleton of the American "lion" is said to show a slender animal, with relative shorted head and longer limbs. So, if we use only skeletons, we can see that these Pleistocene great cats do not resemble to modern lions, but they have they own characteristics and also present jaguar-like features, showing its primitive form in relation with the other 3 members of the lion clade.
