Wanhsien tiger ~

[GuateGojira]

(12-12-2014, 09:27 PM)'Pckts' Wrote: How does this tiger stack up to the other ancient tiger (name starts with Ngo------ Tiger, I dont know how to spell it.)

 

The Wanhsien tiger (Panthera tigris acutidens) was the subspecies of tiger that originated from the Second wave of Sunda tigers to the mainland. Apparently, they suppressed the "old" form of the original China tiger (and could also probably extirpated the old Longdan "tiger" too). This new tiger form was larger and with better carnivore adaptations. With time, at about 150,000 years ago, these tigers returned to the Sunda shelf with a Third wave, this time, they suppressed (or mixed) the original form of Sunda tigers and produced the Ngandong tiger. However, at this time, the Wanhsien tigers were already large, so when they arrived to the Sunda, they reached incredible dimensions.

One important point is that GrizzlyClaws is correct, the only published specimens are those from the "southern" area, although other partial specimens from the north of China are also known. The problem is that there are practically no long bones and the few available with the few skulls, are very small. The most common fossils are dentition and although they seems larger in comparison with modern tigers (Kurten describe it like that), there are some exceptional specimens from Indian and Russia that reached its size. What we need is the size of the huge skull and other large bones that are in private collections, that will be interesting as they seems to be HUGE, but for the moment, the only confirmed giant is the Ngandong tiger from Java.

Finally, after the Toba eruption in Sumatra, about 78,000 years ago, the last population of Wanhsien tigers that survived in the north of Indochina-South of China, was the one that originated all the modern Mainland tiger populations. In a form, we can say that the Wanhsien tiger never get entirely extinct, they only adapted to its new environment i the form of the present tiger.

Just one final thing, don't confuse the Longdan "tiger" (Panthera zdanskyi) with the Ngandong tiger (Panthera tigris soloensis). The first one is an earlier relative of the tiger, a sister species, that existed in China in the beginning of the Pleistocene. The Ngandong tiger was a true tiger that existed in Java in the late Pleistocene. In one occasion, Asad (the liar of the lion fans) tried to create a confusion about this, but I destroyed him and cleared the confusion. I put this again, just in case.
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