Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[Spalea]

@GrizzlyClaws :

About #852: since the modern lions, Asiatic and African, are well-maned lions, whereas the Cave lions and Panthera Atrox (or the North American Lion) were very poorly-maned, we can indeed suppose that the true origins of the mane belongs to the Natodomeri lineage. And perhaps before the split African lion/Asiatic lion. But of course we cannot determine how much the Natodomeri lion's mane was developed. And thus the origin picture of the youtube video (#851) is only a pure speculation.

Inside the "Sciency Thoughts" article, it is said that the Natodomeri lion' size and the Panthera Atrox' size were as big one than the other. The poorly-maned North American lion and the perhaps well-maned Natodomeri lion would be the opposite tendancies as concerns the mane among the Pleistocene lions.


As concerns the size, we can believe, according to the skulls fragments known, that the Natodomeri lion's size and the North American lion's size were equal. After the split African lion/Asiatic lion the lions' size were smaller. But as concerns the Spelaea lineage, the differents lions invading the nothern countries were more and more bigger till they regained, with the North American lion, the Natodomeri lion's size with which he was in part coeval.

I hope not to be confused in my interpretation but...

Now I just make a brief aside in the children novels of the 60th... I have kept from my childhood two prehistoric novels from the french writer, Rosny Ainé (1856-1940) : "The quest for fire" continued by "Le félin géant" (i.e. "The giant felid", doesn't exist in the Wikipedia english langage). According to the described fauna, the two novels happened in the North of the Asian continent.

Just look at how was represented one of the protagonist of the story, a giant lion, the same giant lion in both books (same author but two different illustrators):

Inside "The quest for fire": A kind of cave lion... 

*This image is copyright of its original author

And inside "The giant felid": a very developed-maned lion "as tall as a human", hairy everywhere. Perhaps a vision we could have about the Natodomeri lion.

*This image is copyright of its original author

Rather funny isn'it ? Reply