(07-21-2017, 08:31 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote: I heard that the oldest tiger fossils from there was like over 1.6 mya.

(07-22-2017, 07:41 AM)tigerluver Wrote: The Javan tiger can be considered a chronospecies of the tiger lineage of the Sunda shelf. Essentially, from the moment the island of Java came to be, the evolutionary forces caused by island isolation began shifting the ancestral P. t. soloensis into the modern Javan tiger. Modern Sunda shelf sea level were reached about 17,000 years ago. So give the ancestral tiger a few thousand years for evolution and you have your modern Javan tiger, more or less. So simply, a bit after the island of Java came to be.

(07-27-2017, 10:14 AM)tigerluver Wrote: Island evolution happens quicker than evolution on the mainland as population are completely separated from each other. This results in no gene flow between the Java, Bali, and Sumatra populations which allows certain traits of the initial tigers that were trapped on each island to amplify rapidly in their progeny (this is called genetic drift and sometimes the founder effect). 

Nonetheless, your point is agreed upon by at least some scientists. Some have proposed that there are only two tiger subspecies today, the mainland tigers and the island (Sumatra, Java, Bali) tigers. Furthermore, regardless of what subspeciation method one agrees with, the Bali and Javan tiger are very similar thus the subspeciation differences are not as strong as say, between the Amur and Sumatran tiger.