Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[tigerluver]

The earliest confirmed P. fossilis is dated to 610 kya from Italy. There is a lion-like specimen dated to 750 kya that may have been P. fossilis as well (Sotnikova and Foronova 2013). Now which group do you P. fossilis came from and when:

"The early history of lion-sized pantherine cats is associated with the African continent where a find of Panthera sp. with features of jaguars, leopards and, to a lesser extent, lions is known from the Pliocene fauna (about 3.5 Ma) of Laetoli site (Hemmer 2011). The specimen from Laetoli was commonly considered as an ancestor of the lion group of pantherine felids (Turner & Antón 1997; Werdelin & Lewis 2005), but Hemmer et al. (2001) consider it as a stem species for the whole group of felids mentioned above. Сurrently, the mandible No. 1273 from the Olduvai upper Bed-II dated as about 1.4–1.2 Ma is believed to be the most ancient form of fossil lions. According to Hemmer et al. (2010), only this specimen actually shares apomorphic dental features with the lion group of felids. Other African finds previously assigned to lion-like felids and known from sediments dated as 1.87–1.12 Ma, can be classified only as the ancestral forms belonging to the lions stem group (Hemmer 2011). (Sotnikova and Foronova 2013)"

I'll ignore P. atrox for now as we know it's origin almost for sure. For the remaining three lion species, maybe they all came from unique stem groups if they truly could not interbreed. What is intriguing to me about the cave lion case is that they're seemingly fairly young, despite stem groups appearing as early as 3.5 Ma. Are we missing some of the cave lion fossil record in Europe, or did it take them that long to make the move while it took them no time at all to speciate. 

The earliest undisputed tigers are from Sangiran, dated to about a millions years old. Not too much younger than the undisputed lion fossil. Though, the cave lion and tiger cases are different due to the lack of spatial isolation in tigers. Asia has been Asia since then, while the union of Africa and Europe were reliant on bridges that likely fluctuated in their availability and quite distant. Searching online, it seems that Africa and Eurasia weren't that well connected. So depending on the temperatures, migrations would really differ between time periods. Reply