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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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  *This image is copyright of its original author All cave lions have the "spelaean" nares. The Wahnsien specimen of Hooijer clearly has a tiger's nares as they are thinner. Therefore, no matter where found cave lions should have the wide nares, and the opposite for tigers. From the angle the new Ural fossils have thinner nares to me. I'm not sure what to make of the sagittal crest. It doesn't look like the Ngandong tiger really had one, and the only complete Wahnsien skull doesn't have much of one either, although this could be due to the specimen being female or juvenile. The cave lion skulls don't look to have pronounced sagittal crests either. The mandible that I can see looks either slightly convex or straight, a bit like the Watoealang mandible but also like some cave lion mandibles. The symphysis also seems to curve more sharply than other cats. Nevertheless, the mandibles or older tiger and cave lions overlap too much in my opinion to be identifiers. 
The regular Panthera spelaea specimens don't have thinner nares and vaulted skull, except for those from the Ural.
Since the modern Caspian tiger was known to disperse in the West/Central Asia, pretty close to the domain of the Eastern Europe, so do you think the Pleistocene tigers did have a chance to spread in the European part of Russia? For the modern tiger, all northern variants don't have the prominent sagittal crest as its southern counterpart, the best example is Amur and Bengal. If the Ngandong tiger has the prominent sagittal crest, it is because they are the southern tiger like Bengal.
What fossils do we have from Ural under cave lion? The main one I remember is the Mokhnevskaya skull of 475 mm and actually. Cave lions were all over Russia for sure, but I don't remember reading of another one from Ural.
That's difficult to prove for now, though we need look over fossils from those areas again. Also, the Ngandong tiger lacked the crest, like the Javan tiger.
I have never seen the 475 mm skull in pic, so I can't really comment on anything.
But the new fossils strike me as extremely tiger-like, so I theorize that there was a group of Wanhsien tiger that migrated to the Ural, maybe their fossil remains have been identified as the Cave lion because people were unaware of the tiger's presence in such geographic proximity.
According to Barnett et al. (2009) data, fossils found in the Urals as recent as 28 kya were cave lion by DNA. The Wahnsien tiger of Hooijer is much older. I'm not sure if two large cats could coexist in the Urals.
But Barnett et al. (2009) seemed to have cherry picked the samples, even Guate had pointed out their biased method and samples.
I think all samples should be tested for DNA, but what is the cost? And that's tremendous amount of work, and I am not sure which research team is going to do that.
I'll analyze Barnett et al. (2009) again, it's been a while since I've read it. What exactly were the issues with the methods and samples?
Here is some new pics, and the large mandible looks strikingly similar to the Wanhsien tiger, while the smaller one just looks like any other typical Cave lion specimens.
Overall, I doubt that the DNA sample from Barnett et al. (2009) could cover all specimens, especially those newly discovered ones.  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author  *This image is copyright of its original author http://www.nakanune.ru/news/2015/8/19/22411815/
PS, the larger mandible looks much more fossilized than the smaller one, and it definitely indicates a much older specimen at the same time.
If the Wanhsien tiger is much older than the Ural Cave lion, then could these two great cats use to live in a same place but from different periods? Could the Wanhsien tiger actually precede the Cave lion in the Ural?  (08-23-2015, 02:41 AM)tigerluver Wrote: I'll analyze Barnett et al. (2009) again, it's been a while since I've read it. What exactly were the issues with the methods and samples? I remember that I even made a list for them, but I am going to post only those that I remember in this moment: 1. The sample size of the American specimens is too few, only 4. 2. All the specimens of Panthera atrox came from the sourthern limit of the ice sheet, which compromise the results and the origin of the bones itself, as it is well know that some fossils can be washed from areas far away from they original area. 3. Not a single specimen from Rancho La Brea or southern areas where used for Panthera atrox. 4. Only ONE jaguar was used in the sample for comparison, why they don't included more, specially an specimen from USA, which are many in they museums? 5. They claim that all the "tigers" from Beringia were "lions", but they only analyzed one of those specimens (FAM 69016 - dentary-ramus). This are the most important issues about they study, that I remember right now. (08-23-2015, 03:18 AM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote: Here is some new pics, and the large mandible looks strikingly similar to the Wanhsien tiger, while the smaller one just looks like any other typical Cave lion specimens. If I'm reading google's translation right, only the right skull is a bear's, correct?
Well, the bear skull is flat overall with different shape of nares, and I would be surprised if these skulls turn out to be the bears.
BTW, what do you think about the mandibles? The older one looks quite fossilized, and does it match the Wanhsien tiger in term of the fossilization?
pictures of the
 *This image is copyright of its original author The only pictures published are in black and white, but it the condition of the fossil is not great. The body of the mandible collapsed according to Hooijer and the bone is rough as a whole. The Ural mandible looks in bad shape also. The problem is that the environment can speed up or slow down the decay of a fossil, so age from that is hard to figure out. Also, if I'm reading the article translation right, the bottom mandible is of a modern lion's. The larger mandible's body looks really tall, like the Manchurian mandible and some other P. fossilis, and actually, the trait of a lot of prehistoric cats.
The smaller mandible also looks like some kind of fossil or subfossil, but it is in better condition than the larger one.
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