There is a world somewhere between reality and fiction. Although ignored by many, it is very real and so are those living in it. This forum is about the natural world. Here, wild animals will be heard and respected. The forum offers a glimpse into an unknown world as well as a room with a view on the present and the future. Anyone able to speak on behalf of those living in the emerald forest and the deep blue sea is invited to join.
06-27-2014, 11:10 AM( This post was last modified: 06-27-2014, 11:10 AM by GuateGojira )
Excelent work Tigerluver, a correlation of 0.78 is very positive and actually shows that there is direct relation between total length and body weight in tigers. By the way, don't mix the Amur with the Bengals, they have different body mass and massiveness, at least in modern days.
I estimated the total length of the Ngandong tiger (femur of 480 mm) at 350 cm (233 cm head-body, between pegs of course), so I guess that this will produce a weight of up to 450 kg!
I think that this figure is still excessive, I believe that the Ngandong tiger probably weighed between 370-400 kg at best. Slightly less than Smilodon populator but also slightly more than Panthera atrox and the Cromerian lion.
450 kg does seem a bit high. Though one thing using length has going for it is the nice sample size, giving it more power. The Copenhagen specimens are awkward to use as for one, they're weights of specimens after death, thus likely not a prime animal. The sources of the specimens aren't from top programs either, and cats, especially tigers, seem very lanky in captivity. I believe Peter touched on this in light of their instincts and necessities in the wild. Still lots of testing to do. I'm trying this with wild lions, but their correlation is abysmal. It's positive, but the data points aren't so nicely fit as the tiger data.
Right now, I'm thinking 450 kg is a freak Ngandong tiger while 409 kg is a big male, but plenty of more work to do.
06-28-2014, 08:53 AM( This post was last modified: 06-28-2014, 10:32 PM by tigerluver )
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Smilodon has no modern counterpart, thus I'm still figuring out some way to do a full dimensional estimate.
The difference in the tiger's weight is intriguing. The main reason I'm theorizing is the difference between wild and captive specimens. Furthermore, only the most well off areas (areas with lots of large game) could produce tigers of the greatest length, thus encouraging more bulk as well. Prehistoric cats probably did not have to worry about food, unlike modern Amur tigers (probably the cause of this subspecies lankiness).
The P. spelaea group downsized a whole using a full dimensional estimate. The reason here is that I reconstructed the body based on lion's data, as I found from Diedrich (2011), modern lions have the most similar bone ratios.
I used the tiger data to produce masses for the full dimensional estimate, giving all species the benefit of the doubt of whether they were as bulky as tigers or not.
Thoughts?
06-28-2014, 09:39 AM( This post was last modified: 06-28-2014, 09:39 AM by tigerluver )
I feel wild specimens are more often than not bulkier and muscle-bound than even the most well fed specimens. There isn't much muscle building activity in captivity. Imagine Baikal as a wild animal, with all the muscle that comes along with it such as in those big Kaziranga tigers.
Maybe the bone robustness and proportion aren't that different, and the only difference is that the prehistoric big cats could have more pumped up muscles compared to their modern counterparts due the abundance of the preys.
The animal simply needed a lot of muscles power to subdue those megafaunas.
06-28-2014, 10:54 AM( This post was last modified: 06-28-2014, 10:55 AM by tigerluver )
Thanks everyone for the kind words [img]images/smilies/biggrin.gif[/img].
You make an interesting point GrizzlyClaws. I think I can connect that P. atrox in a way. The bone robusticity of P. atrox is pretty the same as modern lions, but wow, does it have huge nares. It needed all that extra air for something. Cursoriality is big cause, but I'm sure extra muscle was a factor as well.
Bones are probably just a framework for what can be, not what is. I remember a poster known as Ursus posting info that wide bones didn't always produce muscle bound specimens.
As my primary focus right now is tiger evolution in university, I've been scrounging up info on the prey items of the area. Unfortunately, fossil records are as poor as the Ngandong tiger itself. It looks as if there were some large buffalo and rhino-like species living on the Sonda shelf. I'd guess it take a lot of firepower to wrestle down one of those beasts. This is the main reason why I became interested in reconstructing the individual's dimensions and applying them to wild specimens. The wild specimens are the closest we'll get to seeing the prehistoric's felines' builds in my opinion.
06-28-2014, 11:01 AM( This post was last modified: 06-28-2014, 11:01 AM by GuateGojira )
Just image what a massive fight between the huge Pleistocene buffaloes and the huge Ngandong tiger!
Pleistocene mammals were amazing, even primitive humanoids like the Megantrophus of Java or the Heilbelberg man from Africa, were also larger.
Remember that old comparison between the humerus of the modern 221 kg tiger and those of the Ngandong tiger? The fossils were slightly wider than those of the modern tiger, even scaled at the same size.
I first believed that those small, practically irrelevant differences were unimportant, but latter Tigerluver told me that those millimeters are in fact, important and could produce a higher body mass or muscles development.
So, we can suggest, more or less, that the Pleistocene cats were slightly more massive than the modern cats.
Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines
