The size of the Barbary lion

[GuateGojira]

In fact, lions and leopards evolved from Africa (jaguars in Europe, but they also came from a primitive lion-like animal), so the first pure lions expanded trough all the continent and invaded the middle east, south of Europe and followed the way up to India, inhabiting all the dry and desert areas. Like you say, Asian lions have a definitive separation about 100,000 years ago, and since then, they evolved in they own way. However new studies suggest that this divergence could be much earlier.

A recent document of Barnett and his team in 2014 propose that the arrival of Asian lions could be more complicated that previously established. I most read the document first and latter I will post my appreciation. For the moment, I have based my ideas in Dubach et al. (2013). Reply