Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[tigerluver]

Correct, the lions contemporary with modern civilization (<10 kya) is P. leo. P. spelaea went extinct around 10 kya, but it also occupied essentially all of Europe while it existed. So prehistoric humans would have had contact with the cave lion, but the Greeks and after the modern lion.

Three waves of lion are theorized to have come from an African stem group. The first wave, closer to a million years ago, was P. fossilis. The second wave was P. spelaea, whose exact date of emergence in Europe I don't remember, but was long enough after P. fossilis that according to a researcher P. spelaea and P. fossilis could not interbreed (Sabol 2011), and the two species seemed to have restricted each other's movement. I am not certain about P. fossilis extinction and P. spelaea emergence dates as it is debated as to whether the two are sister species or a single lineage. What is certain is that P. spelaea outlived P. fossilis by a long ways. P. leo likely migrated into Europe and Asia after P. spelaea died out, leaving the niche open around 10 kya. As a whole, the modern lion had to wait for the removal of P. spelaea as well as the emergence of a land bridge over to Eurasia.

I can't confirm the difference in size between European P. leo and African P. leo. Although, it'd seem more likely modern specimens are smaller, as that is the general trend across the majority of species. There was an April fools joke played a while back that proposed "dwarf" lions, but it was a bluff. 

Sounds good, though I'll be very busy until after the 23rd. Reply