Cape lion (Panthera leo melanochaita / melanochaitus)

[BorneanTiger]

That said, apart from Eurasian lions in southern Europe and southwest Asia (especially Mesopotamia), even within Africa, the Barbary lion of the Maghreb (Northwest Africa) wasn't the only lion with a mane so 'luxuriant' (as Heptner and Sludskiy put it) that it covered the belly, or as Pocock put, so long that it almost swept the ground. The other lion was the "black-maned" Cape lion of South Africa, the scientific name of which (Panthera leo melanochaita) is now used for extant lions in southern parts of Africa which were grouped into one subspecies by the Cat Specialist Group. Unlike its North African relative (which survived in the wilderness into the 20th century, and was geographically distinct from other lion populations, especially its Western African relative), the Cape lion appears to have gone extinct in the wilderness in the 19th century, the very century when Charles Hamilton Smith described a black-maned specimen from the Cape of Good Hope (south of Cape Town in the southwestern part of what is now South Africa) under Felis (leo) melanochaita, and in geographical proximity to other populations of Southern African lions, especially the Kruger lion, except that the Great Escarpment might have separated the 2 populations, as mentioned by Mazák and Yamaguchi, and therefore, the Cape lion might be closely related to the extant Kruger and Kalahari lions of Southern Africa: http://lionalert.org/page/lion_genetics, https://www.thoughtco.com/cape-lion-1093061, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5...S_20180602

Charles H. Smith, pages 176–177: https://archive.org/stream/naturalistsli...6/mode/2up

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Heptner and Sludskiy: https://archive.org/stream/mammalsofsov2...4/mode/2up 

*This image is copyright of its original author

Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20129/201...0129-h.htm
   

Jardin des Plantes, Paris: https://books.google.com/books?id=15AsyQ...&q&f=false
   

A Lion Lying Down, drawing by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn in the mid-17th century:
   

Cape Lion Specimen Card: 
   

As someone remarked in this forum for hunters (after someone suggested that this was the biggest African lion), it looks like a "black-maned" Cape lion: 
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