The Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea and Panthera fossilis)

[Shadow]

(10-28-2018, 05:05 AM)Wolverine Wrote:

(10-27-2018, 11:40 AM)Shadow Wrote:

(10-27-2018, 09:53 AM)Wolverine Wrote: "Cave kinda lions" and "American kinda lion" … 

I would say, that it is best to keep calling animals as those are called officially and not start to create "alternate realities" in, should I say after all  "amateur forums". It is of course ok to speculate and observe, but there is still science community with professionals, who change classifications when they see, that there is enough information and justification to do so. I don´t think, that people here have enough competence to create new classifications even though there can be reasons to make good estimations about future.

I would find it quite interesting if amateurs would start to make own realities ignoring what professionals are saying. Changing some classification for sure happens if and when there is enough information, which is agreed broadly in science community.

About what "alternative classification" are talking about? Probably you don't know that lion, jaguar and leopard are very closely related and create one group inside genus Panthera, while tiger and snow leopard are also closely related and create another group inside genus Panthera:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Panthera fossilis/spelaea and Panthera Atrox are officially included in the firsts group. 
Before you insult somebody else first read some literature. Even wiki will be Ok for you if you want to make your first steps in this topic (see the Philogeny tree):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panthera

About change of what "official" names you talk about? The only official name in biology is this in Latin letters, others are only nick names. For example in Canada Puma concolor is called "cougar", in USA - "mountain lion", in Europe - "puma", in Florida - "panther". That is not important, important is what is written in Latin letters. In same way somebody could call Panthera fossilis "cave lion", somebody in Argentina could call it "cave ostrich" or "cave elephant". The "official" name of the animal is in Latin. But the nick names of the animals should not confuse the readers. "Lions" are only the animals who belong to specie Panthera leo.
Pahthera fossilis and P. Atrox didn't belong to P. leo so they were not "lions". Its easy like 2+2=4.

I am talking about it, that when we have some names for animals in science community, it is better to keep those. I know quite good situation with these animals and that those are studied all the time. For instance what comes to panthera atrox, there  is research information (quite new one) saying, that it is closer to lion and tiger than jaguar, then again same time another one saying, that basically it is closer to lion and jaguar, than tiger. That is why I said, that it is better to wait and see (my opinion). It is interesting to see, what can be found out about this animal in future, but at least most research seem have one common feature, that it looks like to have had same origins as lion at some point and most research looks like to indicate, that lion is closest species or "sister species". For me it looked like a little bit jumping ahead of research at this point to start to think new names for well known american lion :) Who knows what next reports tell us. Maybe we have had after all some lion species there and only panthera leo survived to modern days... interesting subject of course. Reply