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06-26-2014, 11:03 AM( This post was last modified: 06-26-2014, 11:04 AM by GuateGojira )
(06-26-2014, 10:46 AM)'GrizzlyClaws' Wrote: There is no doubt that the Korean tiger to the Caspian-Amur tiger is just like the Sunderban tiger to the Bengal tiger, just a smaller regional variant.
BTW, if the Ngandong tiger was descended from the earliest Wanhsien tiger that colonized Indonesia and absorbed the remaining population of the old Sonda tiger.
How about the rest of tiger population? It would be interesting to see whole picture of the tiger lineage.
Exactly, Korean tigers were probably smaller just because the area, probably, had an smaller prey base. It is interesting to remember that in older posts, Peter mentioned that old hunters stated that the tigers in the Sikhote-Alin region were also smaller than, for example, the Manchurian tigers, which has been always classified as "giants".
In fact, the Ngandong tiger descended from the already evolved Wanhsien tiger, not from early forms. Remember that when the mainland tigers re-invaded the Sunda area, the Wanhsien tiger was already spread in all east Asia. What entered in the Sunda was a great alpha predator, completely evolved, that simply absorbed the "old" Sunda tiger P. t. oxygnata.
On the mainland area, check my previous post, all the mainland tigers are probably only Wanhsien tigers that evolved after the Toba eruption and that developed regional variations, caused by climate, prey density and at the end, human intervention.