Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[GuateGojira]

(09-11-2018, 08:51 PM)genao87 Wrote: So the femur of 480mm was probably from an average Ngandong Tiger!  Didn't know that was the largest recorded femur of any big cat.   Trying to understand 100% what your saying.  The largest femur of any cat?  So this Tiger as far as we know is the largest recorded cat in history?  If so then you made my day lol.     

  What about the false saber cats...the Nimravidae and Barbourofelidae?  Are they consider cats again or just still separate?    Also about Spinosaurus, there were new fossils recently??   If so did they changed it back to bipedal dinosaur instead of a possible Nimravidae? I cannot see Spino defeating T. Rex on land if it was quadrupedal like dinosaur.

Yes, the femur of the Ngandong tiger (Panthera tigris soloensis) with its 480 mm in greatest length is the largest femur recorded for any cat, living or prehistoric, and is published. However, the specimens of the largest skulls of Panthera (spelaea) fossilis with skulls of over 480 mm may had slightly larger femurs.

Now the thing is that we know many many many fossils of cave "lions", so we know they largest and smallest size, we can create averages and even we can distinguish sex. With the Ngandong tiger is not posible because we know very few elements (only 7-8 specimens and are not related). So with such a small sample we must remember that the posibilities to found a "giant" specimen is ridiculously small, check how much time took to found the Tyrannosaurus rex "Sue"! So in Paleonthology is normally suposed that the fosills that we found are from "average" specimens, because an average sized animal is the most common in the ecosystem. This indicates that those fossils from the Ngandong tiger are probably just average sized specimens, not the largest specimen that the species can produce, you know what I mean?

So, all the bones (skull of c.380 mm, dentitions Pm4 and m1 of the same length that modern tigers, and humerus slightly longer than moder ones too) suggest an animal of the same size than the modern Bengal/Amur tiger, and with those lengths those tigers were probably about 210-220 cm in head body and weights of 260-300 kg. The femur is larger with 480 mm and suggest an animal of 230 cm in head-body "straight" and 360-370 kg. But these were among the must common specimens, so the extremely large animals of this species are still unknown and now with the new large mandible of c.300 mm reported by @tigerluver adn @GrizzlyClaws there are new records of tigers larger than we previously believed. Based on this, it seems that the largest tigers of the Pleistocene and the largest "lion-like" cats of the Pleistocene are in parity.

On the Nimravidae and Barbourofelidae, there are not cats "per se", there are they own family, by the way the largest of them Barbourofelis fricki was no larger than an average sized lion, with shoulder height of c.90 cm and a weight of about 225 kg (Anton, 2013).

When I said "new" fossils of Spinosaurus, I was refering to the last discoveries in the last few years. Check that Spinosaurus was discovered with a very fragementary fossil since the begining of the years 1910's and since the destruction of the fossils in the WWII, there was practically no new discovery until almoust 90 years latter! And what we had with the new bones, a completelly new animal, a short legged and aquatic dinosaur, very large but also very sleak, addapted to eat fish, not to fight other carnivore dinosaurs. So this is my point, when we make an analysis of a species with such a few bones our results are going to be limitted, but with more research and even founding new specimens, we can get better conclusions and now there is some posibilty to check the variations of the Spinosaurus (from 10  to 15 meters depending of the specimen). Reply