The Cave Lion (Panthera spelaea and Panthera fossilis)

[GrizzlyClaws]

@tigerluver is more about skull/limbs, while I am more about the skull/canines.

Together, we are trying to create the grand picture from our own perspective and the domains that we are most specialized with respectively.

I made a comparison with African lion skull and Barbary lion skull, I found out that the Barbary lion as a more solitary modern lion subspecies, they tend to have proportionally longer canine teeth than their African cousins. Same observation also applies to the Pleistocene lions, since they lived in smaller group, their canine teeth were also more developed, and the ratio is in between that of the modern lions and tigers.

I initially thought this fossilized canine tooth was a Pleistocene tiger's, but later I figured out it was a lion lower canine tooth. It is almost 40% longer and 50-60% wider than the lower canine teeth from a 40 cm-ish African lion skull. Overall, the proportion of this lower canine tooth also matches those 50 cm-ish Pleistocene giant lion skulls.

The upper canine teeth would be no less than 16 cm, and its diameter is also no less than 4.5 cm, very close to the magnitude of the largest tiger canine teeth. Only a lion with this type of canine teeth would produce a 50 cm skull.

*This image is copyright of its original author

*This image is copyright of its original author

Reply