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Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines

United States tigerluver Offline
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The mass estimates are very high, and essentially out of the modern world. The equations themselve are of extremely good fit for tigers. The numbers are mathematically produced and the only interpretation I applied was respect of significant digits, 3 digits as you can see. The Pleistocene subspecies were in a way, anatomically different from the modern panthera as we define today, so exact comparison is likely not accurate. 8% robusticity difference is very significant, cats were as robust as some modern bears, and the greatest bears of the time were rhino sized. 

The 475 mm P. spelaea skull is dated from the transitional period according to Marciszak. The relationship between P. fossilis and P. spelaea is highly debated as I wrote on in article, but assuming P. spelaea did evolve from P. fossilis, the 475 mm would be "P. spelaea fossilis" of sorts. From the transitional period, its likely that there were still extremely large cave lion present even though the general gene frequency was being directionally selected for smaller size. Though, if Sabol (2011a) hypothesis is correct, then P. spelaea was a competing smaller species alongside P. fossilis. From the data, it's a matter of personal opinion. Do you think that a smaller species of cat on the mountains would efficiently keep the larger species on the lowlands? Were the prey on the mountains not large enough, or was it a lifestyle difference which caused the exclusion? The gradual evolution of P. fossilis to P. spelaea seems like an easier explanation to wrap the mind around. If the two forms were contemporary, competing, different species, the fossil record would have to be entirely reanalyzed. Wha would be their common ancestor?

In my opinion, P. fossilis population that migrated to the mountains become separated and developed a distinct gene pool, and may have subspeciated rather than speciated. I assert subspeciation as there would likely still be occasional gene flow between the lowland and mountain populations every so often, preventing true speciation (reproductive isolation). Eventually, something caused the entire lowland population to either die out or completely migrate to the mountains. Here, either the official transition of P. fossilis to P. spelaea began or this was the moment the mountain populations returned to the lowland to dominate the entirey of northern Eurasia.
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Messages In This Thread
RE: Freak Felids - A Discussion of History's Largest Felines - tigerluver - 02-23-2015, 07:25 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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