Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[tigerluver]

A Second Case for the Odd Robusticity of P. t. soloensis

I've previously given my own measurements of the bones to show the species great robustness. However, I feel that discussing vK's own published measurements to support the assertion.

Starting with both humeri.

vK provided essentially the complete distal width of each bones. The 381 mm had a distal width of 102 mm and the 353 mm bone a distal width of 99 mm. The length/width ratios, whereby the smaller the number the more robust the specimen, 3.735 and 3.565, respectively. For comparison, Peigne et al. (2005) published a ratio in modern tigers of 3.77. The 381 mm humerus is not too exceptional, but the 353 mm is ~6% more robust than your modern tiger, which is significant. As Wheeler and Jefferson (2009) proposed, perhaps the thinner specimen is younger.

In regard to the femur, vK published the intercondylar notch diameter (IND) of 23 mm, citing how exceptional it was. From Christiansen and Harris (2005), IND can be roughly derived from IND = AW - LC(lm) - MC(lm) for the majority of bones, a few times produces a value a bit greater than the method of vK. Pictorially: 

*This image is copyright of its original author

The three P. t. altaica males averaging 224 kg and 16.9 cm in IND. The Ngandong femur IND is 1.36x wider than these modern specimens, isometrically making the specimen 2.52x their average. Somewhat too much in my opinion, as most studies across species have found a bit negative allometry in long bone width dimension to mass relationships. Nonetheless, even without my personal measurements, vK's own data shows how robust the Ngandong tiger was, similarly to its potential prey item in Stegodon trigonocephalus, showing us a trend in the fauna of Sunda around 400 kya. Reply