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Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

United States tigerluver Offline
Prehistoric Feline Expert
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( This post was last modified: 01-28-2015, 04:03 AM by tigerluver )

Excellent analysis. Albeit, metacarpals and skulls of prehistoric species is relatively senstive, and similarly to your findings, I find to be negatively related to mass in terms of allometry for modern species at least. Metapodials in my opinion are the weakest in size determination, just look at the Wahnsien fossils, extremely robust but certainly not from excessively large individuals. Many prehistoric felids have larger nasal aperture areas as well, highly indicative of cursoriality (Torregrosa et al. 2010). Thus, they would be longer limbed but not as proportionately heavy. This trend stops at P. spelaea according to Marciszak for the lion clad, but is still significantly prevalent in P. fossilis (both long bones and skull). Therefore, it is possible that the huge digit could exaggerate actual body mass.

Nevertheless, have you read of the 465 mm ulna? I can post the excerpt here if the viewers would like (same for the paper on the skull). In my view, that represents the largest specimen of P. fossilis (around 400 kg and probably no less from my regression estimate), as long bones are best represented of size/mass. There is also a 470 mm femur which is officially wrongly attributed to P. spelaea, although it's relatively slender for the lion clad.

Also, please check out my S. populator analysis, I had a hard time justifying it to be over 400 kg from fossil evidence. 
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Messages In This Thread
RE: Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines - tigerluver - 01-28-2015, 12:31 AM
Sabertoothed Cats - brotherbear - 06-11-2016, 11:59 AM
RE: Sabertoothed Cats - peter - 06-11-2016, 04:28 PM
Ancient Jaguar - brotherbear - 01-04-2018, 12:45 AM



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