Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[tigerluver]

To start, I attempted to fit the tooth into some fossil mandibles.

*This image is copyright of its original author

The Trinil mandible doesn't match whatsoever. The Watoealang mandible is too damaged to make conclusions. The Longdan tiger was used as comparison as well, but nothing to conclude from it as the localities of the specimens are different. The Ngandong mandible matches well in my opinion. What do you guys think?

From here on, I'll refer to the greatest diameter from the side as length and the greatest diameter from front as width.

Colbert and Hooijer's modern tigers had an average length of 22.45 mm (18.6 mm-24.1 mm), an average width of 16.18 mm (15.4 mm-18 mm). The average width/length ratio was 0.72 (0.69-0.78) with a standard deviation of 0.04. @Fieryeel's tooth width length ratio = 25 mm/32 mm =  0.78, just within the modern range reported by Colbert and Hooijer. The Wahnsien tigers have pretty much the same width/length ratios as well. This ratio eliminates the possibility that this tooth is a crocodiles.

Crocodile teeth are completely different shaped, but also the width/length ratio is much less when compared to felids.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Leopards were the only other cat to exist around the Solo river, but at 13.5 cm total length, the canine can't be of a leopard. The other carnivores of Pleistocene Java (hyena, dhole, sun bear) were much smaller than the tiger, so those are eliminated as well. It can only be of a tiger.

I don't want to recreate the skull or mandible length yet. I'd like everyone's input on on how the tooth should belong in the mandible.

Special thanks to @Fieryeel again for bringing this gem here. Reply