Tiger-Lion Coexistence in Eurasia between Middle Pleistocene and Holocene Epochs

[BorneanTiger]

According to the following authors, lions and tigers, whether modern or prehistoric, did indeed coexist, or at least co-occur in Eurasia:

1) Craig Packer (https://cbs.umn.edu/research/labs/lionresearch/faq): the Asiatic lion (Panthera leo leo according the the Cat Specialist Group's 2017 classification (https://repository.si.edu/bitstream/hand...sAllowed=y), formerly Panthera leo persica) and Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris) in "many parts of India until the end of the 19th century, but today Asiatic lions are restricted to the Gir Forest in Gujarat State of western India—an ecosystem without tigers. A controversial proposal to translocate Gir lions to Kuno Palpur in Madhya Pradesh has been delayed, partly because of fears that tigers living in Kuno would kill the incoming lions. Only a few 19th century reports are available of wild lions fighting with wild tigers, and it is unclear if one species regularly defeated the other. Many fights were staged between captive lions and tigers during the first decades of the 20th century, and some of these are posted on YouTube. However, the outcomes are difficult to interpret because so little information is available about the contestants (e.g., sex, age and prior experience). Several clips show fights pitting a subadult or female tiger against a full-grown male lion; others show subadult male lions against adult tigers."

Asiatic lion 'Devaraj' in Devaliya Safari Park, a satellite of Gir Forest National Park in the Kathiawar-Gir dry deciduous forests' ecoregion of northwest India, which also includes the tiger areas of Ranthambore and Sariska in Rajasthan and Kuno Wildlife Sanctuary in Madhya Pradesh (where lions were supposed to have been translocated to): https://www.worldwildlife.org/ecoregions/im0206

Bengal tiger at Ranthambore:

2) Pocock (https://archive.org/stream/PocockMammali...1/mode/2up), who rubbished the idea that Indian tigers were responsible for the near-extinction of the Asiatic lion, for reasons like that lions were in places where the Bengal tiger wasn't recorded, like Southwest Asia.

3) Heptner and Sludskiy (https://archive.org/stream/mammalsofsov2...6/mode/2up) said that in the past, the ranges of the lion and tiger often overlapped, that 2 Caspian tigers caught in southwestern Tajikistan harboured tapeworms of the species Taenia bubesei, which was also recovered from the African lion (interestingly), and aside from that both Asiatic lions and Bengal tigers are in India (and that lion's range extended to the Bengal), they mentioned the following places as having both Asiatic lions and Caspian tigers: Anatolia (Asian Turkey), Iran, the tugai forests of the Trans-Caucasus (Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia), and that the lion possibly occurred in Afghanistan and Central Asia, particularly what is now Turkmenistan on the border with Iran, and the banks of the Amu Darya, which were definitely tiger areas, Pages 82–202: 

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Skin of Shirea that Persian lioness, brought to Dublin by King Edward VII in 1902, at the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin: https://www.museum.ie/The-Collections/Do...an-Lioness

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Young lion in Iran photographed by Antoin Sevruguin in circa 1880, adapted from http://collections.si.edu/search/detail/...nline=true

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Caspian tiger in northern Iran, early 1940s: http://www.tigers.ca/Foundation%20overview/caspian2.htm

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A Persian tiger which invaded Georgia: http://kavehfarrokh.com/heritage/the-las...n-georgia/

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The Araks River on the border of Azerbaijan and Iran, where Heptner and Sludskiy said that both lions and tigers occurred: https://www.flickr.com/photos/australian...5194351616

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The national park of Absheron Peninsula on Azerbaijani coast of the Caspian Sea, again, Heptner and Sludskiy pointed to both being here: http://visitbakuazerbaijan.com/visit-bak...-park.html

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4) Sir James Abbott wrote in the 19th century that the lion and tiger were in the region of 'Khaurism' (https://www.wdl.org/en/item/17720/view/2/342/). According to Meyer (https://archive.org/stream/journalofbomb...6/mode/2up), Khaurism is a region between Afghanistan and the Caspian Sea, so 'Khaurism' appears to be 'Khwarezm', an oasis region along the Amu Darya in Central Asia, which includes parts of Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, which would support Heptner and Sludskiy's assumption that the lion was indeed there.

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Dr Meyer as quoted by Kinnear: https://archive.org/stream/journalofbomb...6/mode/2up

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5) Massetti (https://zookeys.pensoft.net/articles.php?id=2126) said that both the Asiatic lion and Caspian tiger were in Syria.

6) Look at this Middle Eastern book from the 17th century on display at the Harvard Art Museum: https://www.harvardartmuseums.org/art/216239

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*This image is copyright of its original author

7) Yamaguchi et al., suspected that the the social structure of the Upper Pleistocene Eurasian cave lion (Panthera leo spelaea or Panthera spelaea), similar to modern lions, had an impact on other predators, including the tiger: https://zslpublications.onlinelibrary.wi...6904005242

Spartak, one of the frozen cave lion cubs found in Yakutia, Russian Far East, this makes me wonder if there are also frozen tigers in this region: https://siberiantimes.com/science/casest...f-yakutia/

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The Wanhsien tiger (Panthera tigris acutidens) of China: https://www.scribd.com/doc/201368987/Val...eet#scribd

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