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Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

United States tigerluver Offline
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( This post was last modified: 01-28-2015, 06:21 AM by tigerluver )

Looking at this map:

*This image is copyright of its original author


GrizzlyClaws, at least in my opinion you are correct that cursoriality was huge in the Pleistocene .Essentially, the lion clads whole Eurasian prehistoric range lacked forest. Open steppe-tundra calls for the abiity to run a lot and efficiently. The best way to achieve this is through long (greater stride), light (the lighter the less energy cost, yet wide bones (spread running impact stress across a large surface area to minimize damage). The lion clad have all three of these traits, suggesting a species supremely adapted for its environment. 

Middle to late Pleistocene tigers are a different story, as you see on the map, those areas are "temperate" and "tropical", in other words, forested to a significant extent. Limb length becomes limited due to the trees above, and at the same time running is not as necessary. With limb length limited and running not a focus, the species can only increase in mass by bone density and width. Leopards and jaguars also show these "symptoms" of forest life.

On the MT3 reported by WaveRiders of 192 mm of P. fossilis, in accord with the ratios published by Day and Jane (2006), that specimen would be of 115 cm at the hip and 97 cm at the shoulder, assuming lion built, and a bit shorter assuming the other species' builts. Day and Jane (2006) use a pictoral method for their data, so there might be room for error as those numbers look too small to me. Furthermore, higher MT/Femur ratios is directly correlated to increased cursoriality, another piece suggesting how cursorial P. fossilis was.
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Messages In This Thread
RE: Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines - tigerluver - 01-28-2015, 04:21 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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