There is a world somewhere between reality and fiction. Although ignored by many, it is very real and so are those living in it. This forum is about the natural world. Here, wild animals will be heard and respected. The forum offers a glimpse into an unknown world as well as a room with a view on the present and the future. Anyone able to speak on behalf of those living in the emerald forest and the deep blue sea is invited to join.
11-06-2018, 05:21 AM( This post was last modified: 11-06-2018, 05:23 AM by Shadow )
(11-06-2018, 04:33 AM)Ghari Sher Wrote:
(11-06-2018, 02:11 AM)Shadow Wrote:
(11-06-2018, 01:46 AM)Ghari Sher Wrote:
(11-05-2018, 10:59 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:
(11-05-2018, 08:13 PM)Ghari Sher Wrote:
(11-05-2018, 10:50 AM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 11:40 PM)Ghari Sher Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 12:00 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 11:21 AM)tigerluver Wrote:
(11-04-2018, 10:44 AM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote: Was the 192 mm MTIII specimen larger than the Chateau skull?
If we use the respective body parts of a 200 kg lion as the samples, it does appear so.
Maybe the 192 mm MTIII specimen could acquire a skull close to 500 mm which is the absolute maximum for any Panthera specimen?
The MTIII is a difficult one. One issue is that when calculating the range of weights produced by isometry, the range I found was as low as 400 kg to as high a over 500 kg. In other words, the bone is not that well correlated to body size, but is nonetheless from a top 10 Panthera specimen. The second issue is that if P. fossilis is more cursorial, the MTIII would be proportionately elongated and isometrically comparing the bone to that of an extant lion will heavily overestimate the weight. Thus extrapolating other body parts is filled with uncertainty. A skull length range of 450-500 mm would not be illogical in my opinion.
The issue can be applied to the skull. P. spelaea had a big skull for its bones, bigger than the extant lion. For instance, the specimen is Sabol (2018) has a femur to skull ratio of 0.99, which is distinctly less than extant lion generally as the number in P. leo is over 1.00. That means while applying the 484.7 mm skull to P. leo ratios, we'd think the femur would be 500 mm. Likely in reality the femur of the specimen was 470-480 mm, which is not that much bigger than the largest P. spelaea (470 mm femur from Germany mentioned by Deidrich). Of course still absurdly gigantic, but not what P. leo comparisons would lead one to believe. Another confounding issue is that long snouts usually means proportionately longer skulls for a body mass/size. We know that P. fossilis did have a longer snout that P. spelaea, likely making the long bone to skull ratio somewhat lesser in P. fossilis as compared to P. spelaea, further decreasing long bone length extrapolations by a bit. It is for this reason I feel the 465 mm has been underestimated via isometry or the 484.7 mm skull at least overestimated. Unless P. fossilis is exceptionally cursorial, a 465 mm ulna should give a femur of around 480 mm, matching the 484.7 mm skull. Now one can see why mass estimations vary so much, there are too many confounding variables. These two specimens were likely body size-wise just about the same as the 480 mm Ngandong femur for these reasons. Mass is a whole different rabbit hole in its own as the tiger and lion lineages hold mass differently. I have lately avoided addressing the complex topic and just give pure isometry estimates but hopefully this makes sense.
As a whole, the closer the species temporally to an extant species, the more accurate the single bone estimates and vice versa.
As for the rank of the cursoriality for the Pleistocene pantherine cats, it could be something like that?
On this issue, I have my own questions regarding Panthera spelaea.
Diedrich & Rothschild (2012) concluded that the cave lion was most likely a pursuit hunter based on bone exostoses on the brachialis muscle attachment point on two individuals, one from the Eemian and the other Weichselian, out of a considerable sample of bones (NISP=1208, MNI Unknown) indicating the use of the paw-sweep used in running, which apparently supports pursuit hunting, as opposed to extant lions which are ambush hunters:
Quote:Exostoses in Smilodon, H. crenatidens and H. latidens are found in the flexor tendons of the upper limb (Heald, 1989; McCall et al., 2003; Moodie, 1923; Shermis, 1983; Turner, 1997) and have been used as evidence for grappling behavior (Rothschild, 2011). The patterns of exostoses in P. l. spelaea have a different distribution (brachialis muscle, reflecting flexion activities), instead supporting the hypothesis of pursuit behavior. The distribution of exostoses (Fig. 7) and enthesial reaction otherwise identifies P. l. spelaea as a pursuit, rather than ambush predator.
However, Schellhorn (2014) concluded based on ulna dimensions that the cave lion bore adaptations closer to forest cats compared to the extant lion, i.e. seemed to be less cursorial, among other things.
Quote:The included fossil cats Dinofelis piveteaui, P. spelaea, and S. fatalis all distinctly plot within the closed or forest habitat in the scatter plots (Figs. 1b, 2e, f).
In this case the sample size was not impressive, only a single ulna was used in this analysis.
And as has been discussed in the literature before, e.g. Sabol (2018), the cave lion was more robustly built than the African lion, and does indeed share similarities to the tiger in some of its features, including in the limb bones.
By scaling the cats down to the same shoulder height, I compared P. atrox, P. leo, and P. spelaea skeletons to each other (left-right, the cave lion skeleton was digitally modified by a friend from an image from this article https://3dprint.com/216653/reconstructing-cave-lion/)
*This image is copyright of its original author
Looking side-by-side, P. spelaea looks somewhat similar proportionally to P. leo, but it is overall noticeably more robust. I don't know exactly what implications this would have for cursoriality, but intuitively one would think it to be a less cursorial, more ambush-oriented predator.
Indeed, assuming the hypothesis of a derivation from P. fossilis, a shortening of the cave lion's distal limbs can be inferred from @tigerluver's calculations on post #52, as we enter the late Pleistocene, which would suggest a reduction in cursoriality.
A similar situation is seen in the cave lion's main competitor, cave hyena (Crocuta crocuta spelaea) which also have shortened distal limb elements, relative this time to their extant counterpart, which has also been suggested to indicate a less cursorial mode of hunting, among other things:
Quote:The crural index (tibia length/femur length) in the skeleton of Los Aprendices is 0.74, which is similar to the values of Crocuta spelaea (0.75) and Pachycrocuta brevirostris (0.74) and clearly lower than in extant C. crocuta (0.82) (Palmqvist et al., 2011). The shortening of the tibia of C. spelaea suggests a less cursorial lifestyle. Also, such shortening could provide great power and more stability to dismember and carry large parts of carcasses without dragging (Spoor, 1985; Turner and Antón, 1996; Palmqvist et al., 2011).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication...o_Zaragoza
Of course this could also be an adaptation towards the colder climate, not just in the cave hyena but the coeval cave lion as well, to reduce the size of extremities. Cave paintings have suggested that the cat had smaller ears, an inference supported by the small ears of the cub remains, as well as the shortened tail found at least in infancy, so the scenario where limbs are also shortened does not seem implausible, but apparently this would happen alongside the retention of a cursorial mode of hunting - assuming the hypotheses of a derivation from fossilis AND the inferences of Rothschild & Diedrich (2012) are correct.
Some frozen finds, such as the steppe bison blue babe, suggest a similar hunting behaviour to the extant lion, though of course the duration of the chase is hard to infer in such cases:
*This image is copyright of its original author
(Multiple lions hunting Blue Babe is a bit speculative, but that's besides the point here. A great illustration by Anton, regardless).
Unfortunately I can only attach Schellhorn (2014)'s paper because WildFact won't let me attach the Diedrich paper, but I'll make a new post and attach it there.
Any thoughts on the level of cursoriality possessed by the Late Pleistocene cave lion? Particularly in regards to the hypothesis that they were pursuit hunters? The exact answer isn't clear to me, and this is the data that I can find.
Oddly, Panthera leo looks like the one with biggest skull when the shoulder height being equalized.
When it comes to the cursoriality, Panthera spealea spelaea from the late Pleistocene looks like the one with the lowest level, and it also attained a maximum weight of 300-350 kg, very reminiscent to the largest Manchurian tigers in the history. These two felines were also highly convergently evolved.
Panthera spelaea intermedia from the early late Pleistocene was even larger at 400 kg, with a higher level of cursoriality which is considered a more primitive trait and transitional phase closer to Panthera fossilis.
Panthera spelaea spelaea should be considered as the final stabilized form of the Cave lion family, looks like its ultimate goal was to evolve morphologically closer to Panthera tigris.
So what would your thoughts be on the conclusions of Rothschild & Diedrich (2012) of the lion being primarily a pursuit hunter?
It depends the chronospecies of the Cave lion, I believe the latest Cave lion was more or less an ambush hunter like the Amur tiger.
I was referring to the latest one, yes, the one which he studied. Based on pathologies he concluded that pursuit predation was their mode of hunting.
I had to check, that what is meant with ambush hunter and pursuit hunter, because I found claim, that cave lion would be pursuit hunter and lion ambush hunter in a way very odd. All big cats still are hunting in very same way. Sneaking close to prey or sometimes waiting that prey comes closer depending on situation. Then making attack and a shorter or longer pursue, but never a very long, up to what cheetah does. About 400 meters. It looks like all these big cats are in pursuit hunter category and none ambush hunter. Even though they hunt also ambushing if opportunity comes.
Then we have ambush hunters like snakes etc. And then persistence hunters like African wild dogs etc. Maybe wolves somewhere in the middle of pursuit hunting and persistence hunting.
But thinking a big cat running long distance, extant or extinct... when even cheetah can´t pursue long distances and we know perfectly well, that lions pursue many times prey some (short) distances. Also tigers do short pursuits when needed and chance to get prey in that way. That research is just telling no-brainer, nothing more or less. Sometimes researchers really are making nice reports about very clear things :) Like I would make a long report how water is wet : My personal opinion is, that trying to divide lion as ambush predator and cave lion pursuit predator is making no sense. I respect researchers a lot, but sometimes..... ; Maybe I missed some point here?
Good point regarding the terminology - I think what Diedrich means is that the cave lion was a persistence hunter, whereas modern lion only give moderately long chases.
Indeed this is what Churchill (2014) interprets it as when citing Rothschild & Diedrich (2012)
Quote:Interestingly, patterns of entheseal reactions on cave lion postcranial remains suggest a greater emphasis on pursuit hunting, suggesting that the Pleistocene lions may have engaged in more chasing of prey and less ambush hunting than do their modern counterparts (Rothschild and Diedrich 2012).
Diedrich contrasts this with apparent ambush hunters such as Smilodon and Homotherium.
As I have written previously, and others have pointed out, the cave lion was rather heavily build, with thicker limbs, and shorter metapodials than the modern lion, which don't seem to lend well to high amounts of cursoriality/ persistence in running.
Then again, they lived in open environments, which might have required a longer chase, but this remains speculative and their body proportions don't seem to indicate such a lifestyle. But then again, there's the pattern of pathologies.
It would be interesting to discuss with Diedrich a little bit, that what kind of pursuits he was thinking about. I am now too lazy to read so closely. If I remember right, that document was wrote in quite... ponderous way. Some scientific documents are well written even though a lot of references to sources, then some are written so, that even irritating to read and figure out what is the point there. Was this document the one with all the time sources and years in the middle of text? That kind of text demands certain kind of mood to read. At least for me :)
But of course environment and type of prey forces predator to adapt to be able to hunt as "demanded". So if environment is pretty open and ambushing is difficult, predator have to be able to chase prey at least some distance. Then again that distance just can´t be too long if predator is heavy. But of course if we look at longest know pursuits of lions and bears for instance, they sometimes show surprising ability to run longer than many would believe if some of those pursuits wouldn´t be filmed.
If and when a bear can run hundreds of meters, why not some big cat... when looking at this video about a lion, not the longest pursuit, but it would be interesting to know the distance. Here this male lion was quite determined to catch this hyena, not giving up like often can be seen with faster prey.
So when male lion as quite heavy and robust animal is able to do this kind of kill, when necessary, for sure it is not unrealistic to think, that pleistocene lions were able to hunt also some distance. I think, that if we talk about persistence hunters we have to rule all big cats out of that category. But if we are thinking, that some big cats mainly attack like ambush hunters only with minimal pursuit or even one leap attacks. Then we have something like modern lion which make ambush attack or pursuit about 20-40 meters and maybe in best case... well let´s say maybe a 100 meters if relatively slow prey. Then cheetah able to go 400 meters. Maybe with pleistocene lions we could be talking about animals able to run somewhere between those distances.
When comparing to other big cats at that time which you mentioned as ambush hunters, then we would of course be talking about a relevant difference making for cave lion possible to hunt in more versatile ways and most probably more different kind of animals as prey. I mean it is of course a big difference if other can run up to 20-40 meters max and other one goes maybe 200 meters with full speed. In more open area that difference for sure can be the difference between success and failure in hunting.
But in that document Diedrich didn´t mention any estimations about distances?
The Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea and Panthera fossilis)
My personal opinion is, that trying to divide lion as ambush predator and cave lion pursuit predator is making no sense. I respect researchers a lot, but sometimes..... ;
Maybe I missed some point here?