The Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea and Panthera fossilis)

[tigerluver]

Perhaps the Natodomeri lion was in the transitional phase as the mane continued to thicken to what we see today. Perhaps this giant was fully maned. The cave lion had split off the lineage around 2 mya, so there was a lot of time for the mane to take its time to evolve at the speed of natural selection.

Reread Barnett et al. (2016), I remembered we haven't yet discussed reclassifying P. fossilis. If P. spealea's split happened before the earliest P. fossilis, would you be inclined to believe that P. fossilis would be more accurately considered a chronospecies of the cave lion lineage and thus be P. spelaea fossilis? Reply