Cape lion (Panthera leo melanochaita / melanochaitus)

[BorneanTiger]

(04-09-2020, 12:56 AM)Dark Jaguar Wrote: Cape Lion Skull

Iziko South African Museum 02 August 2017 Cape Town, Western Cape

https://www.zoochat.com/community/media/cape-lion-skull.423067/

*This image is copyright of its original author

The Cape Lions (Panthera leo melanochaita) of the Museum Wiesbaden  http://www.mwnh.de/coll011.html

additional photographs (2000)

*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

*This image is copyright of its original author

            A skull of a lion from the Kalahari desert  http://www.mwnh.de/coll011.html
    
 

• According to the inventory book (prob. 1903): Panthera leo capensis, Kalahari desert, SW-Africa, 1902, C. Berger, missionary [inventory number According to the index card (prob. 1970): Panthera leo melanochaita, Kalahari desert, SW-Africa, missionary Carl Berger, 1902 [inventory number 52]

          According to the paper of (1966), it is probalby a skull of Panthera leo vernayi.

*This image is copyright of its original author

As I mentioned in the main thread, Panthera leo vernayi was the former trinomial nomenclature for the Kalahari lion, like how Panthera leo krugeri was for the Kruger or Transvaal lion, or lions in Southeast Africa. In fact, Czech biologist Vratislav Mazák hypothesized in 1975 that it evolved geographically isolated from other populations by the Great Escarpment of Southern Africa, but this theory was questioned in the early 21st century. However, he considered genetic exchanges between lion populations in the Cape, Kalahari and Transvaal regions, and farther east, to have been possible through a corridor between the escarpment and the Indian ocean, as mentioned by Yamaguchi in 2000, while he talked about both the Cape and Barbary lions. Reply