The Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea and Panthera fossilis)

[GrizzlyClaws]

(11-06-2018, 10:42 AM)Smilodon-Rex Wrote:

(11-05-2018, 11:03 PM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote:

(11-05-2018, 08:25 PM)Smilodon-Rex Wrote:

(11-02-2018, 09:34 PM)tigerluver Wrote:

(11-02-2018, 12:52 PM)Wolverine Wrote:

(11-02-2018, 12:13 PM)Spalea Wrote: Thus I can easily admit that p. Atrox, cave lion and p. leo are different species... different species of lions ? 

They are different species of Panthera's.

Here budy arise the philosophical question what does mean "lion"? Inside the genus Panthera there are/were many different species, all of them are more or less closely related. If you take a bunch of them- P.leo, P.fossilis and P.atrox, separate from other species like Panthera onca (jaguar), Panthera tigris (tiger), Panthera pardus and call them "lions", then you should create a separate taxonomic unit for "lions" inside genus Panthera. But since such a separate taxonomic unit does not exist its not clear what do you call "lions". Before many people called Panthera atrox  a "giant jaguar" and probably they also had some reasons for that.

P. atrox was called the "giant jaguar" at one point because a study (Christiansen and Harris 2009) found that its skull was more similar to that of the jaguar than the lion. Genetic testing shows this similarity is due to convergent evolution rather than a genetic proximity between P. atrox and P. onca.

In my opinion, three prehistoric lions(Panthera fossils, Panthera atrox, Panthera spalea) could also up to over 400kg maximum weight. But Panthera spalea's inner gap as big as tiger

Panthera spelaea up to 400 kg should be the earlier one in between the transitional phase of Panthera spelaea fossilis and Panthera spelaea spelaea.

Panthera spelaea spelaea was the final stabilized form of the Cave lion, and this chronospecies was 350 kg maximum, comparable to the largest Amur tiger in the history.

It's said that in later Pleistocene about  after 70000 years ago, European cave lion's bodysize was smaller and not gigantic expect the South-East European population still retained the gigantic specimen, from then on, more and more gigantic cave lion's population were moved to the East, like some of the huge skull specimens from Ural mountains in Russia, on the other hand, some gigantic cave lion's skulls from North-Eastern Asia like HeiLongJiang province in China may also belonged to the European cave lions which had moved to the East.

*This image is copyright of its original author

@Spalea , is the later Pleistocene cave lion would looks like this? well one of the interesting character is later cave lions would owned the long canines like tiger，their faces also become round and short.

Maybe some faintly stripes would be even more appropriate?

If not studying their genomes, people would have thought they were some kind of close relatives of tiger based on their morphological appearance.

I would say that both Panthera fossilis and Panthera atrox looked more lionish, even the earlier Panthera spelaea specimens would not have been visually mistaken as a tiger-like feline. Reply