The Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea and Panthera fossilis)

[GrizzlyClaws]

(11-19-2017, 09:20 AM)Wolverine Wrote: When we make size comparisons between Cave lions (P.fossilis and Pspelaea) and American lion, probably there are too scenarios:

1. IF two carnivores  from same clade enjoy SIMILAR abundance of food, SIMILAR prey base, the carnivore inhabiting Northern and colder latitudes will grow larger,more massive.

2 IF the carnivore inhabiting more Southern and warmer latitudes enjoys MORE abundant food resources, MORE prey base than the carnivore from same clade inhabiting to the North due to scarcity of prey in that northern region than the case is getting a bit more complicated, but probably too animals would be similar in size, as now we can see from Bengal and Siberian tigers, which are roughy equal in size. Bengal has in his side great abundance of food, Amur - Bergman's rule.

In other words Cave lions (fossilis and spelaea) who had inhabited subarctic regions of the Earth - Siberia, Alaska, Beringia could be or larger or same in size to P.atrox, who inhabited continental United States but they cant be smaller then him. No way. To rich compromise we probably could state that Cave lions and American lion are roughly equal in size.

Right now based on the fossils, fossilis came out expectedly as the largest, then followed by atrox, and spelaea as the smallest out of the three.

I think it has to do with the prey available, since spelaea thrived in the show quite late in time, and the late Pleistocene was also much colder compared to the middle Pleistocene, hence the prey availability was also possibly more scarce, that's why spelaea must have missed a lot of potential to grow even bigger. Reply