Amur Tigers

[GuateGojira]

I am agree with Tigerluver here. The Wanhsien tiger per se get extinct at about 100,000 years ago, but all modern mainland (and Sonda, at a great level) tigers descend from it. Now, the last population of Wanhsien tigers was that of the north Indochina after the great Toba eruption. Since then, there were no other tiger populations, except those from Indonesia. The greatest evidence is the lack of genetic differences between tiger populations and so, after about 75,000 years ago, those first Indochina tigers were the first Holocene-modern tigers and began they expansion to all mainland. In this case, Amur tigers are just Caspian tigers that traveled to the east and that developed they own characteristics, nothing more.

In the case of the Alaska tigers, based on the date, they should be a northern population of Wanhsien tigers, not modern ones. Interestingly, they were very rare, based on fossils, and this can be explained by the fact that Beringia was more like a steppe habitat, which is not the best one for tigers. In fact, Kitchener & Yamaguchi (2010) claim that based on they ecological models, there should not be tigers in Beringia, the habitat was not suitable for them, with only 50% of probabilities. Even worst, some of the fossils from "tigers" in Alaska were proved to be Panthera spelaea, based on DNA (Barnett et al., 2009).

In this case, although the theory of Herrington (1986) has not been disproved, we most accept the fact that Beringia tigers were probably exceptional sightings and not the norm, as they are incredible rare among fossils, in comparison with other animals of the Pleistocene fauna of the area.
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