Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[GuateGojira]

(08-16-2015, 11:01 AM)GrizzlyClaws Wrote: Then the Panthera spelaea population from the Northeast Asia was also severely affected by the Toba eruption.

Maybe this Cave lion population was the earliest extinct one, much earlier than the European population?

Imagine even the main population like tiger has been almost pushed down to the verge of extinction, then I cannot imagine the situation for other trivial populations.

Since the Panthera spelaea population was struggling to set its footprint in China, but they could never penetrate beyond Manchuria, so their population was probably much smaller than tiger's.

Can you imagine the effect of the Toba eruption to this much smaller population?

Yes, in fact, Barnett et al. (2009) describe several haplotypes that were extinct in several genetic bottlenecks. One of them separated P. spelaea fossilis from P. spelaea atrox. Other separated the Beringia specimens from those of Europe and other one exterminated the "large sized" specimens and only leave the "smaller" ones.

The Toba eruption affected the northern areas with a decrees of the sun light (less heat) and that caused a harder could, probably killing the vegetation and the herbivores. The carnivores were the last to suffer the disaster. Reply