The Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea and Panthera fossilis)

[GuateGojira]

(11-04-2018, 12:25 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote: Those artificial hybrids may have very little value for studying. However, those hybrids that occurred in the wild is just another story.

Remember, we are desperately waiting for the fossil record of the Panthera spelaea/Panthera atrox hybrid, yet everything is still no avail.

In fact, there are/were no Panthera spelaea/Panthera atrox hybrids. Check this image from the document of Dr Barnett and his team from 2009:

*This image is copyright of its original author

The specimens 1,2 and 6 are very close to those of 37 and 38, geographically speaking. If these were the same species-subspecies, it should be no problem if they intermix, but contrary to the contemporary mammals of that region in the Pleistocene, these two populations of cave "lions" did not intermix at all and this is clearly described in the document of 2009. The question is, what happened there? It seems like if the two great cats populations were so different that they avoided completelly, which suggest a deeper separation, just like brown and polar bears, and even among these last ones there is evidence of intermix! Reply