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Pleistocene Big Cats
Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines
Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines
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Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines
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I also notice the shape of the lower canine also fits the archaic features better.
BTW, do you think this fossil has been dated more than 1 million years old? 
Looking at the intermediate features, it could be about 1 mya old. The mandible has the anterior dental shift of P. t. oxygnatha and the curvature and dental ratios of P. t. trinilensis, clearly showing that it is of an intermediate form. Sangiran can go as far back 1.66 mya and Trinil as recent as 500 kya. That would put this new specimen somewhere in the middle.
02-22-2018, 07:26 AM
( This post was last modified: 11-19-2018, 05:01 AM by tigerluver
Edit Reason: Corrected measurements
)
I'll try to get some photos post later. Measuring at what I think is the root if the mandible wasn't broken at that point, the canine is 67 mm tall, 35 mm long, and 25 mm wide. The entire exposed portion is about 82 mm.
 *This image is copyright of its original author
This mandible probably belongs to a skull close to 19 inches, and it got proportionally very long canine teeth, yet the absolute size of its canine teeth still didn't hit the ceiling.
There are even some modern tiger canine teeth which are more impressive than this fossil giant. I wonder if there is modern tiger got proportionally longer canine teeth or simply got even larger skull?
To be frank, the relative canine size for the mandible is rather average. Looking at the previous overlay comparisons, the canine is proportionately as big as that of the Trinil and Longdan tigers. It's just that the skull is so big that the canine is in absolute terms huge.
Maybe the drop in body size caused an increase in canine length. It's energetically cheaper to grow larger canines than a larger body. Therefore, today's cats can achieve a quicker kill with longer canines rather than sheer body strength.
According to Mr. Stout, this mandible has absolutely huge canine tooth in proportion compared to the Pleistocene lions.
So it is possible for a smaller 700 pounds Amur tiger having larger canine teeth than a 1000 pounds Pleistocene Sunda tiger? Since they need to prey on the similar sized bovids, and with a decreasing body size, they need to offset this disadvantage with the proportionally larger canine teeth.
That's a logical explanation in my mind. If we note that the modern Javan tigers can have premolars and molars the size of the large mainland tigers but still have smaller skulls, it seems size and dentition do not follow each other necessarily.
Maybe tigerluver's mandible's lower canine got 1 cm longer, but the anteroposterior length (width diameter) is similar.
Good comparison @epaiva . I would use something closer to the exposed canine measurement to compare with @epaiva's measurements as the 65 mm measurement is taken directly level with posterior alveoli, which is higher up. Regarding skull width and dentition width, has anyone noted a correlation between the two? Unfortunately the mandible doesn't have any of its symphysis to determine skull width with angles.
Shouldn't the canine alveoli have more correlation with the rostrum?
BTW, the AP length should be correlated with the length of the rostrum, while the LM width should be correlated with the width of the rostrum.  *This image is copyright of its original author
The upper dentition would correlate with rostrum width, which should correlate with zygomatic width, within a closely related group, of course. I'd infer lower dentition could maybe correlate with mandible width, which should correlate with zygomatic width. Considering dentition are such poor predictors, I am not sure if this would work that way in reality. Most data has just AP diameters of teeth, making it even harder to analyze for correlations.
Can you sort this out with the regressions done by the Machine Learning?
BTW, there some captive specimens with super impressive zygomatic width, but with mediocre rostrum width.
Marciszak et al. (2014) has some skulls with both tooth width and zygomatic width. I'll try to come up with a regression relationship with that soon, hopefully.
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