Biggest Kaziranga tiger?

[GuateGojira]

(12-04-2014, 10:39 AM)GuateGojira Wrote: Just a suggestion to both of you, why you don't use centimeters or millimeters, instead of inches? Inches are a raw and unpractical type of measurement, millimeters are more exact, especially in the case of skulls.

Just to help in the debate, here are the record skulls with that of the liger skull that I post (greatest length x zygomatic wide):
* Liger skull: 432 mm x 279 mm (http://schreckensart.homestead.com/skullscats.html)
* African lion: 432 mm x 281 mm (Ward, 1914).
* Bengal tiger: 413 mm x 251 mm (Hewett, 1938).
* Amur tiger: 406 mm x 286 mm (Mazák, 1983).

Please check that all the skulls from the wild are "Record" specimens (which means that they are not the norm), while that of the liger, we simply don't know if it came from a large or a small specimen, or even its sex.

Hope this helps.

This post, from 2014, used what were the biggest skull recorded for tigers and lions. However, at 2020, much of that information has been changed.

The liger is still the same, but the African lion not. In fact, we know now that the measurement of 432 mm NEVER EXISTED and it was an exageration from Rowland Ward Records of Big Game of 1914 (and even before). In fact, Roosevelt & Heller (1914) already clarified the issue, showing that the skull in fact measured 408 mm in greatest length. Also they showed that that skull came from a captive specimen, not a wild one, and this is also the same record skull used by Patterson (2004) in his famous graphic of lions skulls in page 114. At the end, the longest lion skull record in hunting records is one from a South African lion of 419 mm in greatest length (Bryden, 1899) and the longest lion skull in scientific records (from a wild specimen, so Mazák's skull is discarted) is a male from Ngamiland that measured 401 mm (Roberts, 1951). Interesting is to say that the longest is not the widest skull, nor even the biggest in condylobasal length.

On the Bengal tiger side, the skull of 413 mm from Hewett (1938) has been discarted as it was measured "over the bone", suggesting that it was probably not measured in straight line "between perpendiculars". So, in this fashion, the biggest Bengal tiger skull in hunting record is a skull of 406 mm in greatest length (Hawkins, 1954). On the scientific side, the biggest measured by Mazák (1981) was a skull of 378 mm, but the Calcuta Museum reported a skull of 381 mm and Dr McDougal (1979) reported another skull of the same length in Nepal.

On the Amur tiger, nothing changed.

So the new list of skull records, using only scientific sources, will be:

* Liger skull: 432 mm x 279 mm (http://schreckensart.homestead.com/skullscats.html)
* African lion: 401 mm x 247 mm (Roberts, 1951).
* Bengal tiger: 381 mm x 279 mm (McDougal, 1979).
* Amur tiger: 383 mm x 268 mm (Mazák, 2013).

Now, using the hunting records, apparently measured "between perpendiculars" (including the mandible? How knows...) are:

* Liger skull: 432 mm x 279 mm (http://schreckensart.homestead.com/skullscats.html)
* African lion: 419 mm x ? mm (Bryden, 1899).
* Bengal tiger: 406 mm x 267 mm (Hawkins, 1954).
* Amur tiger: 406 mm x 286 mm (Mazák, 1983).

Hope this helps for future references. Reply