Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[GrizzlyClaws]

(12-02-2018, 07:46 AM)Ghari Sher Wrote: OK, so this is a thread which I haven't looked through very deeply, so maybe someone has mentioned this before and I am not aware, but there is a preliminary publication (NOT peer-reviewed) out by Shaheer Sherani, where he comes up with a mass estimate of 486kg for the largest specimen of P. t. soloensis (not sure if that's even a valid subspecies any longer given the recent tiger lumping but there you go), the notorious 480mm femur.

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Any thoughts on the validity of this? I have read a lot of the older threads on Tapatalk and other sites where @GuateGojira , @tigerluver, @GrizzlyClaws and a few other have used equations hitherto published to estimate weights of around 350-400kg for the tiger, I thought that the 450+kg weights were all hyperbole.
The other maximum weights he gives seem to be about right based on what I've seen before in the literature, and from using other equations on the same bones, but it's the tiger which sticks out like a sore thumb here.

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Sabol (2018) cited Sherani's publication as yielding a similar mass estimate for the large male lion from Medvedia (307.5 kg) as others he had worked out using the condylobasal length (301.4 kg)

Quote:Thus, the estimated body mass of this adult male with 390 mm condylobasal length is 301.4 kg. The same estimated average body mass was calculated with data from six specimens of P. atrox (Christiansen and Harris, 2009:943), and the similar average body mass (307.5 kg) was also estimated on the basis of new methodology of Sherani (in press).

So his mass estimates for the other cats seem to at least carry some validity, but I'm a bit puzzled about the tiger weight:

https://peerj.com/preprints/2327/

I wonder if the author can access to the actual fossilized materials.

Perhaps only @tigerluver could manage to contract with him? Reply