Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[GrizzlyClaws]

But they wouldn't interbreed with the modern lions in the wild like the Ngandong tigers and the modern tigers.

I am suspecting they (Fossilis-Atrox-Spelaea) descended from an ancient maneless lion lineage in Africa, and the time split with the modern lion lineage was beyond that of the Ngandong tiger/modern tiger and the Brown bear/Polar bear.

The aforementioned two groups all did use to interbreed with each other in the wild.

However, the remaining question that baffles me is that even Spelaea and Atrox wouldn't interbreed between themselves, but are they supposed to be more closely related to each other than they do with Leo?

Maybe the lion clade group was a very old lineage among the pantherine cats, only the Leo group has appeared fairly recent, but the rest was simply very old, perhaps even older than Tigris. Reply