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Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

United States tigerluver Offline
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( This post was last modified: 05-29-2015, 10:58 AM by tigerluver )

Early 20th century measurement were odd to say the least. The only straightforward measurement methods I've encountered was Merriam and Stock, simply because they described everything thoroughly. von Koenigswald is a bit confusing at points, especially with the long bones, as he measured the Dawkins book illustration really oddly. For example, the book is 24 cm in length. Most of the other bones fit the scaling expectation. Two phalange that at ~70 mm in length in reality equate to over 100 mm by the wrong scaling on the page. He also gave measurements of different areas of the cheek but never bothered to give the individual dentitions measurements either. Often the scaling of pictures relative to the page is totally off in a lot of the old books too. I'm guessing that's more on the publisher. Hooijer skipping out on skull lengths is just as weird. I guess they were writing on so many fossils at once that things got messed up in the packaging. Add to that, I feel most paleontologist pioneers were more focused on hominids in the area, as many of these books/documents compare other species to human characteristics. At least they logged the material. 

Also, here's the vK page showing his ratios of the Ngandong skull and the rest of the comparitive material:

*This image is copyright of its original author


On the Ngandong fauna, it's interesting to note that this area was still very close to the coast at the Java. Java was at the edge of Sunda shelf, and many large species were supported at this geographic location. 

Another observation on the leopard of the Ngandong. They were likely larger than todays. Two specimens mentioned look to be around 100-120 kg, a bit bigger the size of the largest verified leopard I believe. They were also more robust. The Cervini of middle Pleistocene Java were not that large, Gruwier (2015) shows that at best, some were a bit bigger than the Sambar. This large leopard probably preyed on these. The other herbivores were elephant-like species and rhinos. These don't look to be African elephant size, but they were within the range of what you'd expect a 300 kg cat to prey upon alone.

At this point, if posters would like info on specific cat species, please ask. I'm getting busy with specific specie work so I'll have to sometimes refrain from taking the initiative of bringing the description of another species. I've a lot of old record, a bunch digitalized as well if people would like to read those. I'll sign off with the Dawkins book, describing remains of the English European cave lion and other species such as the cave bear. England was glacially connected to the rest of Europe during the ice age, allowing simple terrestrial immigration and emigration of species. 

https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=...pg=GBS.PP1
 
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Messages In This Thread
RE: Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines - tigerluver - 05-29-2015, 10:46 AM
Sabertoothed Cats - brotherbear - 06-11-2016, 11:59 AM
RE: Sabertoothed Cats - peter - 06-11-2016, 04:28 PM
Ancient Jaguar - brotherbear - 01-04-2018, 12:45 AM



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