Comparing Cats: A Discussion of Similarities & Differences

[dominusforti]

So I have a topic for discussion.

In paleontology, it is commonly found that the survivors of a large scale extinction event will experience a reduction in size compared to their ancestors.


Well, as we know, during the Late Pleistocene most species of large terrestrial animal became extinct, and the few species of megafauna that remain (largely concetrated in the African and Asian tropics) seem to be noticably smaller than their Pleistocene counterparts. This includes polar bears savannah elephants, and of course big cats like tigers, jaguars, and lions.

What is interesting though is that morphology related to body size allometrically. What this means is that due to their larger body size, Pleistocene felids were also morphologically different than than Holocene successors, in ways that affected their function.

The question I'd like to pose is, how much has morphology among felids varied over time? Have Bengal tigers really become larger or smaller over the course of history? Some seem to think so. Have lions become less muscular or heavily built? Old literature often states lions as thicker or stockier than other cats, but this is not so today, at least compared to tigers and jaguars. Are there are papers that compare muscle attachments in, say Ngandong tigers to those of modern tigers? I find these questions very interesting, personally. Reply