Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[tigerluver]

A correction of my assessment of Trinil fossils.

The Trinil femur by Brongersma is a leopard. Ignoring the size of the bone itself, I recently familiarized myself with leopard bones. Leopards look to have a thinner trochanteric fossa, a higher trochanter than femoral head, and a relatively thinner AP diameter of the femoral head. The Trinil femur has pretty much the same traits. The vK leopard femur is also identical in structure as well. Add to that, it's a specimen below 100 kg and there's no visible growth plates, so the probability of it being a tiger is very low. The two metacarpals in vK are also likely leopard not only on the basis of size, but also structure. The metacarpals that are certainly tiger from Trinil are more curved and a bit more robust. 

The Trinil specimens are not significantly smaller than the majority of the Ngandong/Pitoe specimens, supporting the new study that Trinil HK isn't much older than the Solo river fauna. 

Also, the missing link in the southeast Asian tiger should be P.t. oxygnatha of Sangiran, which is dated to a bit over a 1 million years ago. This fits quite well with the mid Pleistocene tiger lineage.
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