Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[tigerluver]

Another aspect of body mass estimate I've been working with is validation of estimates from bones. For starters, I collected scientific and hunting record specimens of wild Bengal tigers and compiled this (a scientist from the late 1900s proposed this method, can't remember who).:

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Log-scaled everything to find a growth trend:

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I wasn't too selective on what I added to the database, as there are some clearly underweight specimens while at the same time overweight, hopefully it cancels out. The allometry is extremely positive. The fit of the line is okay. Looking at this, there's more to body mass than just long bones.

My research here is in the early stages. I estimated the Ngandong tiger's total length to be 347 cm. Applying it here yielded an estimate of 446 kg. 

Thoughts?
Looking at Amurs, they are much lankier, especially the modern variety. Mixing Amur data with Bengal data totally throws off the correlation.  Reply