Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[tigerluver]

I'll get back to you on that tomorrow. 

Until then, I found this abstract, but I can't find the paper:
A cladistic analysis of the teeth and mandible morphological characters of Pleistocene lions from Hungary


ESZTER HANKÓ1 and ZOLTÁN KORSÓS2 

1 Department of Geology and Paleontology, Hungarian Natural History Museum, 
Ludovika tér 2−6, 1083 Budapest, Hungary     E−mail: [email protected]
2 Department of Zoology, Hungarian Natural History Museum, Baross u. 13, 1088 Budapest, Hungary


ÁLLATTANI KÖZLEMÉNYEK (2007) 92(1): 39–51.

Abstract. Systematic position of three Hungarian Pleistocene fossile lion taxa Panthera leo fossilis, P. l. spelaea and P. onca gombaszoegensis (originally Leo gombaszoegensis) were clarified by the cladistic analysis of 71 teeth and skull morphological characters. The two most parsimonious trees, using the computer program Hennig86, showed that Leo gombaszoegensis stands closer to the Jaguar (Panthera onca), also in the ingroup, either at separate specific, or at subspecific (P. o. gomba¬szoegensis) level preferred here. The position of the two Panthera leo subspecies were the same in both trees, i. e. the Cave Lion (P. l. spelaea) has a closer relationship to the recent African Lion than to its previously hypothetized ancestor (P. l. fossilis). This result seems to prove that the expansion of the ancient lions from Africa to Europe was not only a single event, but rather a series of dispersion phases in times of favourable climatic conditions.

Keywords: Panthera, cladogram, teeth morphology, Hennig86.

Edit: Spoke too soon, found it. But it's not in English. It's attached if anyone wants to go for the translation. Reply