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06-09-2015, 12:01 AM( This post was last modified: 06-09-2015, 12:02 AM by tigerluver )
The Trinil specimen I know of are quite small. I measured both pictured mandibles and the complete length would be around 210 cm. There is also a small femur mentioned in Brongersma. All in all, these specimens were likely no heavier than 130 kg. At the same time, tigers found in Ngandong had some specimens which were just as small. So is the Trinil variety conspecific or an ancestor? Is the size difference due to random chance? Prehistoric animals had much more variation in size. Gruwier et al. 2015 showed this in cervids.
There are some differences in the mandible between Ngandong and Trinil. It's hard to say whether this is interspecific variation or intraspecific variation due to the small sample size. At the moment, I'm leaning to intraspecific variation as the four Ngandong mandibles at hand have variations between each other in the same manner they differ from the Trinil mandibles.
With that, Trinil and Ngandong are very similar to each other. From what I see, the Manchurian mandible is closer to P. youngi than it is to the Javan mandibles. The Javan mandibles are more concave and softly curved. P. youngi and the Manchurian mandible are more convex and have squarish, sharper curve symphysis. The Longdan tiger mandible is also quite similar to the Manchurian one.