Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

[GuateGojira]

(11-13-2018, 01:25 AM)Wolverine Wrote: I remember a long arguments in some European forums about the real body mass of that P.t.soloensis with 480 mm femur. There was a table with weight assessment (I think from proffesional palaeontologists, not sure) of that specimen of 480 kg. But than many guys noticed how come a cat with so gracile bones could weight 480 kg, "that's a bullshit". Somehow in internet snicked that photo with the tampered femur, I have no idea who tampered and why - intentionally or non-intentionally. The weight of the soloensis was reassessed to 340-370 kg by some bloggers.
Now seeng the original photos of Koenigswald you posted it looks like the animal had more robust body building and maybe we have to return to idea of much higher body mass.

Actually, there is a loooooooooon story regarding all those images and post in the web, and I am proudly part of it.

All started by 2008-2009 when some posters showed images of an study of Dr Hertler and Dr Volmer about some tigers from the Sunda islands that apparently weighed 470-480 kg. It was very interesting and it was labeled as the Trinil tiger. At that moment nothing was known about these prehistoric tigers, no fossils, no documents, just the tables in the two papers from the mentioned scientists from 2005 (thesis) and 2008 (document), so I began an investigation about those fossils and based in the documents of Dr Hooijer (1947 and 1953), Dr Brongersman (1935) and Dr Groves (1992) I created a brand new topic in AVA and rediscovered what is now known as the Ngandong tiger Panthera tigris soloensis. Here is the first and original topic that I created in 2011:
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/animalsv...rkwv_u0h8k

After the end of the AVA forum, another forum from @Kingtheropod saved many information and I continued with the investigation, check it:
https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/animalba...n-t21.html

In those two topics, from diferent forums, it started a huge wave of information regarding Pleistocene tigers and one poster finally presented information (not images) from the book of Dr Koenigswald, G. H. R. Von, 1933. Beitrag zur Kenntnis der fossilen Wirbeltiere Javas. Wet. Meded. Dienst Mijnb. Ned. Ind., no. 23, 184 pp., 28 pis. Before that information, I only theorized that based in the skull of c.380 mm and the humerus of 381 mm, the Ngandong tiger was very large, just like modern Bengal and Amur tigers and I discovered that the weights of 470-480 kg were derived from a "femur" using the Anyonge (1993) formulas which produce gross exagerations. However, after the presentation of the measurements of the femur discovered by Dr Koenigswald, all the participants in my post found that we were dealing with something very big, surelly the biggest tiger ever.

After that we started with our first weight estimations and at the end I calculated a weight between 143-368 kg (from seven specimens) using the isometric equation and the methods of Christiansen & Harris (2009) and Sorkin (2008), which is basically the same, but Sorkin used the largest measurements available from particular specimens to extrapolate the size/weight and Christiansen and Harris used especific specimens (tigers, lions and jaguars) to estimate the weight using the same isometric formula.

At the end, I published this image with the final results of my calculations and in fact, the Ngandong tiger was the largest tiger ever:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Trought all that time, @GrizzlyClaws also found very large dentitions and a huge skull from a Pleistocene tiger from China, which apparently belonged to the crono-species of tiger known as Panthera tigris acutidens, however the published bones shows an animal no larger than the modern tiger, but more stockier. The dentition presented by Colbert & Hooijer (1953) suggested specimens larger than modern Amur and Bengal tigers, but using the formulas of Legendre & Roth (1988) and extrapolating other bone measurements I created this image:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Obviously after all that, @GrizzlyClaws finally found in a Chinese forum the first pictures of the fossils of the Ngandong tiger from the book of Dr Koenigswald, but were very distorted, check it:

*This image is copyright of its original author

So despite my best efforts, I was unable to reconstruct the true form of the femur. Some Russian posters even try to show that the femur was only 408 mm and that the information in the original book was incorrect, but with time I showed that it was false. At the end @tigerluver found the original book and published the first correct images of the large bones of the Ngandong tiger, and corroborated with I showed since my first post in AVA: all the fossils from the Pleistocene tigers show specimens of the same size of the modern Amur and Bengal tigers, some of them much smaller, but the Ngandong tiger femur of 480 mm and the large dentitions from China showed specimens much larger than that. Sadly the great tiger skull found by @GrizzlyClaws is in a private collection so probably we will never know its true size.

So that is the history of the re-discovery of the Ngandong tiger. The fossils and measurements, the weights that I calculated and the pictures from @GrizzlyClaws. Now @tigerluver took care of the investigation and I ended my part about the Ngandong tiger for the moment. So, stay tuned for more information.

Now, lets return to the Cave "lions" again. Reply