The Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea and Panthera fossilis)

[Ghari Sher]

(08-31-2017, 07:11 AM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote: The family of the maneless form of lion had started their legacy as the giant pantherine long time ago, much earlier than other big cats.

The predecessor of the Cave lion was already the giant pantherine, so the Cave lion was merely like 'a rich born in a noble family', unlike the Amur tiger who was 'a new rich born in a poor family'. With the extinction of the Cave lion, it might provide more room for the Amur tiger to enjoy their privilege as the giant pantherine for a while like their close relative the mighty Ngandong tiger.

The Amur tiger was also flexible in the size shift, maybe the full rise of the advanced human civilization had forced them to change back into normal sized. Also a swan song for the legacy of the giant pantherines since the giant maneless lions and the Ngandong tiger, it rightfully ended with the recession of the Amur tiger.

On the topic of cave lion-tiger relations, Baryshnikov (2016) interestingly describes the presence of both cave lion and tiger remains in the Pleistocene deposits of Geographical Society Cave in Primorsky Krai, Russian Far East, dating back to MIS 3. The tiger remains are radiocarbon dated to 34,000- 48,000 years BP.
Tiger remains are much more numerous than those of lions, but due to problems with the stratigraphy, it is hard to tell if the two big cats were coeval, or merely inhabited the region intermittently with changes in climate.

According to him:

Quote:The absence of detailed stratigraphic correlation for the bone material precludes the possibility of demonstrating the coexistence of big cats: Panthera tigris and P. spelaea. In conditions of mosaic mountain landscape in the vicinity of the cave, the forest dwellers (Panthera tigris, P. pardus, Lynx lynx) could coexist with inhabitants of open vegetation (Panthera spelaea and the fossil hyena Crocuta ultima (Matsumoto, 1915)). However, it is not improbable that species with different ecological preferences were confined to different stratigraphical levels. The remains of felids and other Carnivora have been found in Geographical Society Cave within sediments formed during a warm Interstadial within MIS 3. The remains of southern species (Panthera tigris, Crocuta ultima) are represented there by large bone accumulations, whereas the fossils of boreal species (Panthera spelaea, Martes zibellina (L., 1758), Gulo gulo (L., 1758)) are scant. Most probably, Panthera tigris and P. pardus lived in the southern parts of Russian Far East only in warm climatic conditions (Interstadial, Interglacial), when the region had been predominantly forested; presumably, these species were absent in the region in colder periods of glaciations.

https://www.zin.ru/journals/trudyzin/doc...hnikov.pdf Reply